Thatcher-as-icon also removes much of her individual accountability.

Well she wasn't the only one in government – holding her solely accountable for supporting pinochet or for selling weapons of mass destruction to Saddam wouldn't be entirely fair, and at the same time the whole phenomenon of "thatcher-as-icon" was originally the product of a friendly media and the rest of the tories' PR machine that set up her up as this ideologue and symbol of laissez faire economics.

The current thing of "thatcher-as-monster" really only came out as a result of the implementation of laissez faire economics by both the tories and by labour – she was built up by the tories and labour as a symbol of a system that gave us a gutted NHS and stole our children's milk.

And she still is, even with the coming and going of the Smiler since.

Tomsmith and Sciamachy don't seem aware that the true flame of liberalism is now held by the Left, not the Right. Think about how morally judgmental - anti-sex, anti-gay, anti-drugs, anti-choice - that the Right is. The freedom to do what you want with your own body and that of consenting others, definitely belongs to the Left.

You may not have heard of Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse, but he was a Liberal politician (who refused to join the Labour party only because he felt it was too union-based and therefore sectional) who saw that the real mantle of liberal progressivism had shifted against capitalism and towards collectivism. He described himself as following "liberal socialism". In the end, most of the Radical wing of the Liberal supporters joined Labour, when they saw that it was winning real fights for workers' rights.

If you oppose or are afraid of progress, if you cling to outdated moral or religious ideas, if you think that one individual should have the right to trample over and enslave others in the name of profit... then I'm afraid you're not a liberal. We are the true liberals now - and because we are the "reality-based community" (compared to e.g. the massively declining faith-based communities) we are the ones with history on our side. This country has become increasingly liberal and progressive - on culture, sex, human rights, gays, women, ethnic minorities, equality - that in the long run, the defeat of the forces of conservatism is certain. If you want to feel at ease and look forward to a happy future then make sure you're not clining to those declining pillars of the past! Come and join the bright side, and build a better future fair for all!

Mr D: I'm not for a redistribution in the true socialist kind of way, just in a fairer way. It cannot be right, morally or indeed in any way, that when some people are scraping by on peanuts, whilst others are lording it up on sums of money as great as, if not more than, £130,000 per week. I'm far from convinced that these big earners do much at all which is for the better of us as a nation, we've brainwashed ourselves into believing they are somehow our saviour, they are not.

By redistribution, I mean an end to the bonus culture until the deficit we are obsessed with is paid off, I also mean a total clamp down on tax avoidance. That's where the real billions are, at the moment it is being claimed back to the detriment of those who frankly haven't got it, it's morally indefensible and it has to end!

I tell you, if it was down to me, I'd have a huge team of HMRC compliance officers going through the books and transactions of the ones who are really getting away with outright theft, the technology is there to catch these people up and tighten up these loopholes. We should go full steam ahead and call in what isn't being paid in real revenue terms. That's proper redistribution. Nobody can tell me that it is right for us to be nailing those on lesser incomes (by which I mean those on less than say an upper ceiling of £75K) when we should be hounding the real big earners and shaking them til their accounts are showing more austerity related balances - just like the rest of us.

This Government is being completely pretentious in saying it's about paying back our deficit for 'future generations', it's utter tripe. The very rich are just upset because their savings are'nt yielding them the fat interest payments they are used to, nor are they able to fleece the less well off like they usually do because they have no money. This wrteched and vile Government is concerned only with preservation of wealth for those who don't know what a recession is. We need to wake up and realize how it's the rich who are fleecing us, the real theft is not from the likes of so called benefit scroungers, it's from those at the top.

It was a joy understanding the Bradley reference

Oh dear Penny, where to begin. Im in my early 20's and consider Margaret Thatcher to be the greatest post war Prime Minister. Most Conservative/sensible people will concur.

Im afraid this country is burned out (as it is after every Labour government) because of the Brown terror and Labours addiction to tax and spend.

thatcher was called the iron lady by the russeins for a very good reason,she in my view was not a right winger but in fact she was a communist and a admirer of joseph stalin,look at the way the commies treated there miners and the poor in there country in the 80s,compare that with the way thatcher treated the miners and the poor in this country in the 80s,see you have to study these things carefully and unravel this jigsaw and put all the pieces together,thatcher and stalin were 2 sides of the same buttcrack..

Thatcher may have won three elections but she never once got near 50% of the vote. Britain then and now has an anti-conservative majority.

In the three elections she fought if you combine Labour/Liberal/Alliance votes it always comes to over 50% in each election. She might have won but it was the fault of the divided opposition that she in effect won by default.

Her greatest legacy was not the Falklands or the Union legislation, but New Labour. Her fear and that of her supporters was that they knew that Labour would eventually regain power. The fear was that Labour would simply undo most of what she did in office.

The fact that we had a Labour Government for 13 years that did little to undo her policies is Maggie's greatest legacy and Labour's greatest shame in it's entire history as a party of Government.

Jeremiah: I have to disagree that new Labour and the Tories were one of the same. New Labour rebuilt the public services which the Tories destroyed in their years of wilful neglect. The Tories are now launching a further wilful destruction exercise, thankfully it will bring about their demise. All that New Labour did was not bad, (although I agree it was not all good either). The constant rubbishing of New Labour (especially by Labour) is doing nothing to restore our credibility.

STEVE JONES, You are right, the UK has rarely paid it's way as a nation since WW2, and some industries such as shipbuilding were loss leaders since the thirties [due to a deadly combination of poor management and incredible numbers of demarcation unions],at the same time Germany had just 1 shipbuilders union.
There is still vast overmanning in some industries, this always brings about too high prices, and eventual collapse [ eg the UK car industry, with strike after strike].
As Ireland is just finding out, you will never borrow your way out of debt! Fact is output per man employed is much higher in Germany. That's why they sell so many BMWs here.

Up the Tories: I don't remember taxes being that much less under your lot? I do remember how they stripped this Country bare of decent public services, which as always accounts for necessary expenditure by a Labour government, every Labour government has to put right the destruction left by the Tories, the same will happen as soon as this lot get booted out. What the Tories have never mastered is how to maintain decent public services whilst maintaining growth.

Given all of our rapidly diminishing public services, when will the Tories be slashing our tax then? We all know that will never happen.

Buckskins: That's very brave of you!

@jeremiah

If those 25% always vote Labour out of habit then why is it imperitive that the party should reconnect with them "if it ever wants to win again"?

Surely the party can take these people for granted and focus on floating voters?

What use would bringing in old-Labour policies have? As you have said, the people who would benefit from them already vote labour in every election anyway. Who else are they going to vote for? ... the SWP?

You're a liberal, Laurie? Are you serious?

Stuart: What, one of those who smashed up the Tory HQ? Take him or her a box of chocolates or a nice bottle of wine!

Nick get over it. Labour's out of power, thank god. Labour and that awful Mr Brown are now just bad history. That piluck is responsible for all our woes. Why because he took his one good eye of the banking sector. By the way the Unions played a major part in the demise of manufacturing not just Mrs T. I know saw it from both-sides...

Well said Mrs Nobody! I completely agree with all you say.

@Mrs Nobody

I have a low opinion of many of the political opinion formers in this country, and that includes a lot of the contributing comments on these pages and not a few of the columnists. I come from a science/engineering background and find the tendency of many political activists to ascribe everything the characteristics of a morality play. Many of the issues are simply bad decision making, misplaced priorities and lazy thinking based on matters of political faith and not rational analysis.

I do find it amusing that Laurie Penny chooses as her profile picture one with the look of a petulent teenager. It does oh so fit the mood of many of her colmumns.

Sandrine: You say Thatcher got this Country back on its feet? Are you referring to the mass walkouts, poll tax revolts or perhaps to the people who were waiting in hospital corridors because there were no beds?

Thatcher bled the country dry of decent public services, that's why Labour had to invest in all she had destroyed.

You say you 'remember' the Thatcher era as is you were equally able to remember the Labour years by comparison. Given when you left College, you would not have been that old (I presume) when Labour where in, do you trully remember both eras to fairly compare, really?

You say the Country was 'riding' high when Labour got in, how can you justify that statement? Labour swept into power in 97 because the voters (with a turned media to boot) were thoroughly disillusioned with the Tories. The only 'riding high' reference which could be fairly applied is to the tsunami of unemployed and out of work; the usual legacy of any Tory Government.

Where the Tories always go wrong is in their messages:

'Get on your bike and go to work'......said by a Government who created mass unemployment.

'Short sharp shock sentences for young offenders'........said by the Government who promoted youth crime.

'All will be able own their own home'.........Hmmm, look where that one got us.

And now there latest statement by Lord Young ' You've never had it so good'.........Pardon? Said, by a Government in these days of Austerity!

I really think you would need to have lived more fully through both eras before you can say you remember them well enough to make comparisons.

It's your last statement which concerns me, you don't like the idea of the cuts or poverty and your not 100% this coalition is doing right either, if that's the case.....don't support them!

"We do not want a united Germany. This would lead to a change to postwar borders and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security."

...That's margaret Thatcher pleading with Gorbachev to stop the dismantling of the berlin wall btw.

Where the hell are all these daft thatcher loving american commenters coming from anyway?

Benedict. I don't need various studied to see what i see with my own eyes..

Luddite, I assume you come here to persuade people of your viewpoint. Making a wild assertion without providing any evidence for it is going to persuade nobody at all.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion. It may be true that we're living in the shadow not of Thatcher herself, but of Thatcher the icon and whatever this stands for - what's your poison? However, the real Lady Thatcher is still very much alive so please let's be careful what we say about this venerable OAP.

Argentina has always contested that it legally possesses the Malvinas; its arguments are sound, British rule was not continuous (it was used as an Argentine penal colony, for instance), and there is a strong case for it simply being part of Spanish South American Empire (which was certainly not just the successor to the Incan Empire).

The colonial descendents claim British nationality under British law, but under Argentine law they would also be Argentine citizens. They have failed to claim their Argentine rights because they have relied on British militarists and old imperialist daydreamers to do their fighting for them - as well as oil-craving neocons these days.

Either they come back to Britain or they can stay there as Argentinians, but they can stop expecting "our lads" to go out there and die for them in the name of a defunct and injust empire.

Stuart - there are some fundamental differences between the two (e.g. Marxism-Leninism doesn't believe in the idea of private property, whereas Fascism does, Communism is usually atheist whereas the Fascists curried favour with the church, Communists generally overthrow the old feudal / capitalist ruling class whereas Fascism likes to keep it), and previously they'd fought a war by proxy in Spain

I tell you what Luddite, I wouldn't squander all of £8.09 of my hard earned cash on that rubbish for anything! You are unbelievable, a true Cameron believer; one who believes anything he reads in a comic! Well said Dave C!

Luddite, you'd have been better giving Cameron that £8.09 to help reduce our deficit!