It feels rather unseemly to be discussing Margaret Thatcher’s funeral arrangements while she is still very much alive but I doubt that giving her a state funeral will divide the country in the way that Kevin Maguire and Sunny Hundal are predicting. Take the example of Ronald Reagan, who in many ways was as controversial a figure as Thatcher.
I was working in Washington when he died and no one was quite sure how this very liberal city would react to his funeral. But everyone actually behaved respectfully and with affection for him, the streets were lined as his funeral cortege passed.
Talking to people at the time, it wasn’t so much Reagan that Washingtonians were coming out to pay their respects to but the passing of a particular historical moment. I suspect that much the same would happen here. For whatever you think of Thatcher and Reagan—personally, I think they are the greatest post-war Prime Minister and President respectively—they have clearly shaped the world we live in.
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