Where's Col Rouge when you need him?

Confession: I am no Thatcher groupie. But I could not let this flawed perspective pass without comment. For a start, it hopelessly confuses means with ends:

"It was right that the Falklands should be liberated..."

But according to the author, the means to achieve this were so tainted with Maggie's hubris, that the fact that the proper result was reached is also somehow... wrong? The same result could have been achieved by, perhaps, a fireside chat with Gen. Galtieri?

"Once again there were some good reasons for [taking on the miners]. But once again the methods Thatcher used were wrong"

Could you perhaps imagine for us, Mr Cooke, a scenario where a different approach - appeasement, back-down, compromise, whatever - could have engineered the same positive result for the UK economy?

It would be pure speculation, would it not, full of "ifs" and "buts" and "maybes..."

As for the "downhill path" Mr Cooke describes...

"The legacy of her mismanagement lives on... her refusal to ease [the] passing [of declining manufacturing industries] resulted in tens of thousands of workers losing their jobs without hope of reemployment."

Interesting phrase, "ease their passing". How - even with the benefit of 100% hindsight - could this have been achieved?

"Her simplistic way of thinking could not embrace the concept of Britain as an active participant in the European Union."

And how incredibly right she was. The future of the EU is an enormous topic on its own. But I challenge Mr Cooke to articulate one benefit of which non-membership has deprived the country.

As someone who left the country to get away from her hectoring condescension, and her self-righteous schoolmarming control-freakery, I never thought I should find myself defending the old bat.

But this article has nothing to do with Ms Gillard's political future, and everything to do with gratuitous Maggie-bashing.

A poor article that manages to combine illogicality with spiteful nastiness. Like the author and Pericles I am a migrant from England. I came here before Thatcher and remember England as a tragic country that was dominated by the trades union movement. The author says that there was reason to do something about that issue but does not put it strongly enough. Heath was elected democratically. He was brought down by a trades union, i.e. the miners. Can the author tell me anything more serious that that a union can defeat a government?
Thatcher came to power at a time of decay caused overwhelmingly by the unions. She took them on and won. Pericles is right, the authors suggestion that that could have been done some other way than tough use of a democratically elected governments powers is just puerile.

Gillard is no Thatcher. She is a run of the mill lawyer who comes up through the well worn tracks for promotion within the ALP. Thatcher went to the local selective school because she was smart. She then qualified as a chemist, then a lawyer who came to lead a party of upper class snobs who had been to the 'right school'. A truly remarkable effort.

The key question must be - was the country better off after Thatcher than before? The answer must surely be yes - for all her faults as listed by Pericles!

Graham, I’m with Pericles and eyejaw on this article. We used the “Iron Lady” and many other world leaders as case studies for training corporate management. The topic was “Leadership and Decision Making” and was run by the Australian Graduate School of Management at Sydney Uni.

JFK and the Iron Lady were the highest ranked, not just as politicians but as true leaders who never squibbed hard decisions. I’ve no doubt that dear Maggie could be an absolute pain in the butt, particularly when she was channeling “Hyacinth Bucket”, however, in terms of leadership qualities she was outstanding.

As for our Julia? In applying the same objective criteria as applied by the AGSM, Julia would not even get a mention as a rookie, utterly different leagues

Dear Graham Cooke you have trivialised an important figure with petty and shallow criticisms. OK you don't approve of everything, or perhaps anything, Thatcher achieved but achieve she did and it wasn't all accident. She turned Britain round, painfully perhaps, but successfully, and shifted it into the modern world.

Julia Gillard has no place in your argument she is a different and her own person and may yet achieve her 'moving forward' mantra with bells on.

Don't be petty Graham, it does't become you.

Pemmy

The writer professes a love of soccer. All I can say is that the article ranks on the same level as the England soccer team - utter rubbish.

From 1945 until the advent of Thatcher the UK was undergoing a gradual decline with both Conservative and Labour governments continually subsidising uneconomic industries. For example in the early 1970s a British coal miner whose productivity was 1% that of an Australian miner (they were digging by hand seams less than 10cm thick) was subsidised in his job by six times his annual salary of 5000 pounds.

I left the UK in the early 1970s thinking it was all over and until the advent of Thatcher it was. My best friend from school was CEO of London and 'Red' Ken Livingston's closest adviser. A total Labour supporter he says that there is no doubt Thatcher saved the UK and by keeping it out of the Eurozone has kept its future under its own control. You may have disagreed with her principles but you can never deny her ability to stick to them. By the way it was not just the unions; when the City underwriters came to her to be bailed out of the BP underwriting as it went under water she sent them packing.

Unlike Julia, Maggie was a champion of small business and entrepreneurs and no friend to the big end of town (which also include the unions.)

Was Maggie Thatcher was a person of true integrity who did not realise who were pulling the strings of real power?I doubt it. This I know. The following traitors;George Bush,Dick Cheney, Bill Clinton,Tony Blair,John Howard,Gordon Brown,Zibigniew Brzezinski, and Bibi Netanyahu, have sold our humanity for a few pieces of power lust.

They have painted themselves into such a narrow corner of orchestrated insecurity, that now,there is no room for negotiation.War is the respite of cowards and avaricious insanity.Old insecure men initiate them,while young men die for no good reason.