Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Margaret Thatcher: faultless on the Falklands but a disaster at home

issue 13 April 2013

I’m afraid we have to use Nelson Mandela as an example once again. He is proving very useful in his dotage, old Nels, as a comparison for stuff. A sort of benchmark. So, when the BBC’s Eddie Mair kebabed Boris Johnson and called him a ‘pretty nasty piece of work’, it seemed to me relevant to ask if he would level the same sort of charge at Nelson, were Eddie ever to be afforded an interview with the sainted man. Nelson’s organisation, remember, blew things up with bombs, and people died: he was a terrorist — whereas in effect all Boris did was schtupp some ditsy babe and tell Michael Howard a porkie pie.

But it is unimaginable that Mr Mair would have been as rough on Nelson as he was on Boris; he would, instead, have been utterly reverential. Likewise, then, imagine what would happen if — when Nelson ascends to that great laager in the sky — right-wingers danced on the streets of London with bottles of champagne singing songs of a celebratory nature bearing placards exulting that at last the bastard is dead! Can you imagine the outrage? It is inconceivable that the revellers would not be arrested and charged under some public order act or hate crime.

Or how about this — a right-wing politician announcing on Twitter that they hoped the dirt would be properly stamped down on his grave? This is what the repulsive self-publicising semi-Muslim appeaser of Arab despots George Galloway tweeted of Margaret Thatcher. Imagine that said of Mandela! The metro left is possessed of a hair-trigger sensitivity and is always determined to be outraged and offended, and enforce its displeasure with the law, but cares nothing for the sensibilities of those whom it offends.

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