Friday, March 22, 2002

This in from the Hon. Zach Courser:

What news? What news in this, our tottering state?

How nice that the dummies that now represent the Tory party could give
Baroness Thatcher a few parting shots on her way out of public life.

There is something about American political parties that tends to lionize rather than cannibalize their former leaders. But Great Britain has always hurt the ones it should love. Winston Churchill's unceremonious defeat before then end of the war in 1945 comes to mind. But the level of ingratitude being shown to Thatcher by her party is shameful. It is perhaps too easy to forget the appalling state of the British economy and the general defeatism that pervaded British politics before Thatcher took power. Certainly her own party has forgotten. The ersatz conservative and Tory leader, Mr. Iain Duncan Smith, apparently feels pressure from segments of the Tory party to "renounce" Thatcher and her views toward European Union. They wish to pursue more "grown up" policies and shed the parochial image of "small-minded, xenophobic and bickering Little Englanders." I take this statement as code: "grown up" policies are those you find in the Labour party and the editorial page of the Guardian, and "small-mindedness" is the stuff of conservatives. Perhaps those who feel this way would also feel more at home in the Labour government, instead of enervating whatever strength is left in the Tory party.

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