What Cameron must learn from the Lady

By DAILY MAIL COMMENT

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A new poll in the Guardian shows that Thatcher is significantly more popular than any of today's party leaders

A new poll in the Guardian shows that Thatcher is significantly more popular than any of today's party leaders

On the day our greatest peacetime prime minister takes her final journey, one striking opinion poll should give David Cameron pause for thought.

It appears in the Guardian (of all unlikely places) – that house journal of the publicly funded Left, which has echoed the BBC in relentlessly portraying Margaret Thatcher as a hugely divisive and destructive figure.

Yet what it shows is that, in death as at the height of her career, the former prime minister is significantly more popular than any of today’s party leaders.

Answering the standard question about how they would vote in an election today, 38 per cent replied Labour, against only 32 per cent for the Conservatives.

But when voters were asked to imagine a younger Margaret Thatcher was Tory leader again, the party shot up eight points to take the lead, with the 40 per cent that might give an overall majority.

Aren’t there clear lessons for today’s Prime Minister who, while Lady T was alive, devoted so much of his energy to distancing the Tories from her legacy?

Indeed, Mr Cameron need only look back to his own, all-too-fleeting, moments of popularity to realise that people respect him most when he behaves more like the phenomenal Lady.

Take his surge in the polls after he said a firm No to joining the EU’s fiscal union. Or consider the new benefits cap, whose trials began this week.

Mr Cameron need only look back to his own moments of popularity to realise that people respect him most when he behaves more like the phenomenal Lady

Mr Cameron need only look back to his own moments of popularity to realise that people respect him most when he behaves more like the phenomenal Lady

Of all the Coalition’s policies, isn’t this the most popular – and more so by far than his trademark support for green taxes or gay marriage?

It is high time Mr Cameron began to give voters more credit for understanding the gravity of our economic plight – underlined by the IMF’s downgrade of its growth forecasts – and the vital need for  tougher measures to deal with it.

True, the Guardianistas and the BBC will howl their protests, just as they did against Lady Thatcher in the 1980s. But what she understood so well is that votes flow from doing what is right – not from merely trying to be popular.

 
   

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If only Mr Cameron could persuade voters he shared her belief in the sense and talents of the aspirational people of Britain from whom she sprang, how much more he could achieve for this country.

As for today’s funeral, the Lady herself wouldn’t have turned an immaculately-coiffed hair over the absence of Angela Merkel or the knee-jerk Leftism of clerics such as the Dean of St Paul’s.

She might even have taken it as a compliment that, two decades after she left Downing Street, attention-seeking Left-wingers threaten to disrupt her obsequies. But this paper prays fervently that the ceremony will pass in peace.

It is too much to hope her detractors, imbued with the BBC myth of Lady Thatcher the destroyer, will give her the credit she is due as the woman who saved Britain. But at least let them show the human decency of respect for the dead. 

If they don’t, they will demean only themselves. For her honoured place in history is unassailable.

Victory for localism 

The Mail rejoices that the Coalition has been forced to re-think tearing up restrictions on home extensions.

True, the plan might have given a boost to the construction industry. And many would have welcomed the chance to build on to their homes, without having to worry about local objections. 

But how many of us would want our  neighbours to do the same?

Before the election, the Tories spoke much about the virtues of localism. What a pity that, now they’re the central Government, they have to be forced to practise what they preached.