The Staggers

The New Statesman’s rolling politics blog

Palin is coming to London

Palin says that she hopes to visit London soon to meet with Margaret Thatcher.

By George Eaton Published 07 June 2011 12:38

Following her One Nation bus tour of the US East Coast, Sarah Palin is hoping to take her pre-presidential campaign international with a visit to London. A lull before the bus tour resumes in Iowa, where the first Republican primary will be held, means that Palin will have an opportunity to brush up on her geography.

She told the Times (£): "I love London and England ... We hope to be able to visit soon. I'd like to meet with Margaret Thatcher." But an aide for Thatcher cast doubt on whether the Iron Lady would meet with Palin. He told the Independent: "Nowadays, the Lady rarely meets people at all. If a meeting went ahead it would be very much low-key, and would very much depend on how things were on the day. We don't make firm appointments for this sort of meeting."

Palin reportedly expressed no desire to meet David Cameron, something that is likely to come as a relief to the Prime Minister. But, as my colleague Sophie Elmhirst noted in her piece on the rise of Palin's "mama grizzlies", several of Cameron's MPs are keen admirers of the former Alaska governer.

Nadine Dorries declared: "I think Sarah Palin is amazing. I totally admire her", while Louise Bagshawe hailed Palin as a "remarkable figure": "I watched her acceptance speech at the Republican party conference and it seemed to me that it was a glorious moment, a birth of a new political star."

Palin, who once mistakenly assumed that Africa was a country, not a continent, is hoping to stop in London on the way to Sudan in July.

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Tags: Sarah Palin

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50 comments

Tue, 2011-06-07 12:59 — trololol (not verified)

@randy

And you should know that it IS a continent, it's not IN a continent.

Tue, 2011-06-07 13:23 — Des Demona (not verified)

Is she coming on her bus? Has anyone told her the Atlantic is in the way?

Tue, 2011-06-07 13:30 — Hamish (not verified)

@trololol

You should know I'm content with your continent accuracy.

Tue, 2011-06-07 13:36 — Benedict (not verified)

Harwich for the Continent,
Frinton for the incontinent

Sat, 2011-06-11 09:02 — Mr. Divine (not verified)

Yes they will be, but they'll be wearing pink

Tue, 2011-06-07 13:40 — ang (not verified)

Why would she waste her time, Obama has a 2nd term in the bag!
Still I suppose she could get some tips from Thatcher on how to be a complete and utter cow-face!

Wed, 2011-06-08 17:04 — Freeman2

"Nowadays, the Lady rarely meets people at all. If a meeting went ahead it would be very much low-key, and would very much depend on how things were on the day. We don't make firm appointments for this sort of meeting."

Just tell the crazy old bat it's Nancy Reagan.

Tue, 2011-06-07 13:56 — C Baker

Palin is a thicko like Bush junior and attracts the same ilk.

Tue, 2011-06-07 14:20 — me (not verified)

Well Isn't this an opportunity for Al-Qaeda to redeem themselves

Tue, 2011-06-07 14:36 — Colin Honeyman-Smith (not verified)

Maybe she thinks Margaret Thatcher is still Prime Minister. she does have problems keeping up with modern developments

Tue, 2011-06-07 14:39 — Juan (not verified)

Palin DID NOT think Africa was a country.
That is A LIE BY A POLITICAL OPPONENT.
To repeat it as if fact is not journalism, it is propaganda.
The anonymous aide who started this fiction was trying to destroy Palin's reputation. The "journalist" the aide told it to knew it was a fraud, yet treated it as a fact, because it was what they wanted to hear.
It was lies through anonymous sources that were used to kill her future political chances, by operatives who worked for her future opponents.
That is not "fact", it is character assassination.
At least use the truth.

Wed, 2011-06-08 18:51 — Bill Payer (not verified)

Palin - the Queen of the Chavs meets the rusting lady.

Tue, 2011-06-07 14:48 — Viva (not verified)

Oh, dear. Juan is about to blow a blood vessel in his impassioned defence of his queen. The truth is that the McCain campaign staff were staggered at Mrs Palin's ignorance of all manner of countries, such as Africa, Korea, Iraq, etc.

Mrs Palin is singularly stupid and singularly proud of it.

Tue, 2011-06-07 14:52 — Indu Pendent (not verified)

Thinking SP, cant help thinking Matrix.

Pretty pious all american apple pie mommy must be the balance to something pretty ugly, left wing, not having much core support and into marriage as an after thought.

Anyone come to mind?

Tue, 2011-06-07 14:58 — yuccaplant (not verified)

I would write her off,if indeed she chooses to run,at your peril.

Lest we forget a nation that gave us 8 years of George w.Bush

Fri, 2011-06-10 00:05 — Peter Smith (not verified)

I recently ran into Lady Thatcher at the Ritz. I must say she seemed quite compos mentis. Which is more than I can say for Palin. Nevertheless I do not see a lack of either intelligence or sanity to be a bar to high office.

Tue, 2011-06-07 15:19 — Jack Holroyde (not verified)

Now's the time to invest in Heckler & Koch, particularly their Sniper Rifle portfolio.
There will soon be a rush to buy.

Wed, 2011-06-08 20:08 — Thomas Devine

Guys! Since we kept Christopher Hitchens, who is old and sick and besides, you don't want him anymore, why don't you keep Sarah Palin? All you ever wanted of America is to shout at us and call us stupid. So Sarah Palin should be the American you always wanted!

It's like the 1920's. We in America had Hollywood and you guys enjoyed your expanded post-WWI Empire (and told us we were stupid) look how that worked out! I think we should made the same kind of deal today!

Tue, 2011-06-07 15:30 — bluplanet (not verified)

Yes cheerleader Juan, but on planet Palin everything's so small that Africa could well be a country. After all, she DID say in 2008 that Afghanistan was a "neighboring country" (of the USA).

Tue, 2011-06-07 15:30 — David (not verified)

So Dorries and Bagshawee think she is an amazing woman. Just about sums up the (ahem) 'modern' Tory female, and goes a long way towards explaining the behaviour of those two ridiculous women.

Tue, 2011-06-07 15:42 — Stu (not verified)

I'm not sure what she could learn from Marge, maybe she wants to liken herself to the 'iron lady' image.

US has failed with a black president and probably fail with a female president... muhahaha

Tue, 2011-06-07 15:51 — David Lindsay

Will Thatcher explain to Palin her lifelong support for abortion up to birth, which she ensured became the law of this land while she was Prime Minister, with her proxies specifically and repeatedly citing the existence of Down's Syndrome as the reason why it was necessary, as they still do?

And will Palin explain to Thatcher her admirable history as a Buchananite battler for job protection, for war aversion, for immigration control and for family values against the archenemy of all of them, the global "free" market, together with her record as Governor of Alaska on the basis of publicly administered natural resources held in common ownership?

They are both overrated. But Palin is the better of the two.

Tue, 2011-06-07 16:20 — Seaman T

Whoopee, a Witches Convention in London. Would love to be the fly on that wall, but better not tell those two harridan crone's I said so. They might wave a wand and oblige.

Tue, 2011-06-07 16:35 — Yonmei

There are a few things one can say were morally solid about Margaret Thatcher, and one of them is that she understood that it is wrong to force a woman through pregnancy against her will. (Though contrary to David Lindsay's facile lies above, she voted for a legal limit of 28 weeks in the 1967 Act and voted for that limit to be reduced to 24 weeks in 1990.)

Compare this to Sarah Palin, who openly admitted that if her underage daughter was raped and became pregnant, she would force her daughter to have the rapist's baby: and who also voted to make rape victims in Wasilla pay to collect evidence against the rapist. (Rape kits were provided free of charge to the victim, to collect forensic evidence: when Palin was Mayor, she discontinued the practice in favour of having rape victims pay a fee for the forensic examiner to use a rape kit.)

Margaret Thatcher was a highly intelligent and effective political operator: it's difficult to measure Sarah Palin's intelligence, but she is without doubt not as smart as Thatcher in her heyday.

(Example: when TV cameras were filming the Presidential candidates in the 2008 elections, Sarah Palin came bustling into the voting room, saw the queues waiting for the voting machines, and headed directly for the start of the queue, declaring that she was too busy to wait. I saw it on the news, and thought "My god, she's just lost every voter in that room.") Of course we organise elections better in the UK than they do in the US (a very low bar to cross, but still, we do) but busting to the head of long queues in front of TV cameras shows a distinct lack of political savvy.

Wed, 2011-06-08 22:53 — ahem (not verified)

Get used to Palin's face. She'll be a big part of the next administration. Obama will soon be an historical footnote.

Tue, 2011-06-07 18:49 — DeltaRambler

Should be an interesting conversation. I'd love to be the proverbial fly on the wall for the scintillating conversation that will flow between these two brain-dead opportunists.

Thu, 2011-06-09 00:31 — thinkov

bollocks

Tue, 2011-06-07 19:25 — matthew fox (not verified)

Palin thinks London is the capital of Scotland.

Tue, 2011-06-07 20:36 — X102 (not verified)

It's missing the part where an unnamed aide stated that "Palin is nuts".

I lived through Maggie's time, and I hate the old bat with a passion, but when it comes to intelligence, power and polical savvie, Palin isn't even in the same game, nevermind the same league.

Don't for one minute think that Palin will be given an audience with Cameron either - he knows that meeting Palin creates completely the wrong image for a fairly forward-thinking Tory government, that has coalition issues right now. Then again, even if it had been a landslide, Palin still wouldn't make it past the iron gates at the end of Downing Street.

Tue, 2011-06-07 20:37 — hayneman

'Nadine Dorries declared: "I think Sarah Palin is amazing. I totally admire her"'

Says it all really - takes a wingnut to know another. And Dorries wants us to take her seriously?...

Tue, 2011-06-07 20:51 — Sharon H. (not verified)

Great you guys get to have her for a few days.

Fri, 2011-06-10 04:21 — the pinkpostman

IS Crosby -Textor behind this visit.
and will the Blackshirts be the welcoming party?

Tue, 2011-06-07 21:40 — thinkov

i'm going to throw onions at her

Tue, 2011-06-07 23:28 — Victoria Mitchell

Give me Michael Palin any time.

Wed, 2011-06-08 04:46 — Mr. Divine (not verified)

Africa is a country.

Wed, 2011-06-08 04:52 — Mr. Divine (not verified)

The capital of Africa is Uganda because it is in the middle.

The longest river in Africa is the Amazon because not only does it flow through South America (another country) but across the Atlantic Ocean and up the Congo ... check it out on ocean currents.

Wed, 2011-06-08 05:36 — Mr. Divine (not verified)

Out of Africa (part 2)
Sarah: How diddly Maggie?
Mag: Please to met you Mrs Palin.
Sarah: I've got me gun, lets shoot some of those zebras you've got in your back garden.
Mag: No! They're my dalmatian dogs!
Sarah: Are you sure? How about killing some of them vultures?
Mag: They're sparrows!
Sarah: Lets kill them anyway. We are in Africa aren't we?

Wed, 2011-06-08 05:40 — harry greenwood

I am led to believe that Mrs Thacher is a borderline dementia so if this is so and the meeting does takes place it will be a fair contest with the Iron Lady having the edge.

Wed, 2011-06-08 08:14 — STOAT666 (not verified)

Nadine Dorries and Louise Bagshawe, well it speaks volumes about that pair!

Wed, 2011-06-08 09:52 — G-Town (not verified)

louise bagshaw is in a tizz http://twitter.com/#!/LouiseMensch

must point out writing multiple tweets to get a sentence out hardly feels in the spirit of twitter.

Thu, 2011-06-09 19:07 — Thomas Devine

Palin is a celebrity, not a politico. She fakes politics in order to have a salary from Faux Noise. She will keep her face around for awhile, and people will act like she's interesting, but she won't be involved in any real work. She doesn't like work.

Wed, 2011-06-08 10:10 — Mr. Divine (not verified)

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG

Sarah: fuckin hell how many vultures have you killed Maggie?

Wed, 2011-06-08 10:48 — Mr. Divine (not verified)

Maggie: a couple more than you. I have the edge.