Ding Dong.

Somehow the tone of the seven-hour service of remembrance in the House of Commons on Wednesday was in large part a snub to the life of Baroness Thatcher. Few talked with her fearless abrading conviction. There is something mesmerising about tyrannical self belief that leaves people befuddled yet touched by a leader who allows one to lose the necessity to think or assume any personal responsibility. It was a time when, the witch being dead, the ‘vegetables’ could choose for themselves but could only muster the remembrance of what she would have wanted. The dichotomy of the public’s reaction at this passing is between thinking and un-thinking, between those who rationally consider the plus and minuses of her achievements and those who continue to yearn for a matron’s firm hand. The grieving is for Britain’s most authoritarian leader and the jubilation is for the possibility of becoming free of it. The eulogies and semi-state funeral will polarise these opinions. What I don’t understand is the divide of empathy. How can I and as it happens the Queen be acutely aware of the plight of those who haven’t led such charmed lives while Ian Duncan Smith glibly says he could live off £53 a week? How can the poor be branded as ignorant, feckless no good scroungers? How can I and my two friends conversation last evening be berated as a sinister meeting of antisocial yobs? Thatcher was a bully and inaugurated a culture of bullying that exists to this day. Through name-calling, surveillance, disempowerment and, where necessary, brute force her legacy is so devoid of empathy as to be sociopathic. Undoubtedly a strong, formidable, unique woman but not a legacy to be proud of.