Why did it end so badly? 
Ross McKibbin
- Margaret Thatcher, Vol. II: The Iron Lady by John Campbell
Si monumentum requiris, circumspice. Even those, John Campbell suggests, who have little or no memory of Margaret Thatcher, live in a world she created; and from which there is no going back. More than any other British prime minister, even Gladstone, she conforms to Max Weber’s type of the modern demagogic politician: the leader who appeals directly to the electorate over the heads of the party machine; and who subordinates the machine to his or her political personality. In the end, the machine overthrew her; but there is no escaping that personality. Even her foolishness was larger than life.
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Ross McKibbin is a fellow of St John’s College, Oxford, and the author of Classes and Cultures: England 1918-51 and The Evolution of the Labour Party: 1910-24.
Other articles by this contributor:
The Reshuffle and After · Why Brown should Resign
An Element of Unfairness · the Great Education Disaster
What can Cameron do? · The Tories and the Financial Crisis
The Destruction of the Public Sphere · Brown v. Cameron
Mondeo Man in the Driving Seat · Blair’s Government at Mid-Term (1999)
Make enemies and influence people · Ross McKibbin tells Tony Blair what to do
Why did he risk it? · Blair, Brown and the US
Defeatism, Defeatism, Defeatism · Ten Years of Blair
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