Thatcher: A Leader Vindicated by History

Max Boot, writing at Commentary Magazine about Margaret Thatcher's legacy:

What Reagan and Thatcher showed – and it is a lesson that may seem at odds with the conservative impulse that the private sector is the most significant – is what a difference political leadership can make. (Later Rudolph Giuliani showed the same thing – he was for urban policy what Reagan and Thatcher were for national policy.) They both inherited a mess: In Thatcher’s case she took over in 1979 following the “Winter of Discontent” when Britain was paralyzed by multiple strikes and high unemployment. As the Conservative advertising slogan had it, "Labour isn’t working." Reagan, of course, took over from Jimmy Carter in the wake of the failed hostage-rescue mission and in the midst of a severe recession characterized by "stagflation." Worst of all was a widespread loss of confidence in the future – both in Britain and America it was fashionable back then to imagine that the "the West" was finished and that the Soviet Union was ascendant.

Thatcher: A Leader Vindicated by History