UK's Thatcher, rot in hell . . .

Well, a larger proportion of people were willing to vote her out of office.What I am complaining about is that she behaved as though a parliamentary majority was the same as a popular mandate. For example, just because a mere 58% of the voting population voted that she shouldn't be Prime Minister, this did not give her a mandate to introduce the poll tax on the grounds that this was part of her party platform. She wasn't merely doing the will of the British people by doing so just because the strange British electoral system gave her the power to do so. Therefore, she deserves some blame for doing so.

If we're going to be picky, I think it's more accurate to use advertising weasel words, something like 'of those people that expressed a preference, Margaret Thatcher had the majority vote.'When used in the '9 out of 10 cats, that expressed a preference preferred Shitallot' TV advert, we can assume that a large number of cats just eat anything they were given and were perfectly happy to be given it.If those that didn't express a preference didn't want her to be Prime Minister, it's fair to assume that they would have voted for someone else and not simply gulped down the Shitalot after having three chances to ask for a nice bit of fish.

Quite so. This is why I supported electoral reform while voting Labor. The fact that I supported the party did not blind me to the fact that they were being handed absolute power by a minority of the electorate.

They did. Those are statistics for people who voted, not for the general population including people who didn't bother to vote.58% of people voted for someone else. She won, but having won, should she not have taken that fact into account, instead of using her victory to push even harder for her personal ideology?

In short, no.She had a majority, she gets to do what she campaigned on - plus a few surprises. If people don't like it in sufficient numbers, they vote her out and she doesn't get to do it anymore.Asking the winning party to moderate itself ain't much of a strategy for the losers.

In short, yes. But not by 58% of them voting her out, 'cos that wasn't sufficient numbers. As it turned out, refusing to moderate themselves was a pretty poor strategy for the winners. That's why her own party kicked Thatcher out and abolished the poll tax. That's why she left office in tears and became a bitter recluse.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Yes, but, particularly for america, maybe it is more a general disliking of any smart person, ESPECIALLY anyone who is smarter than themself.Bush Jr. was labeled by the public as "someone I can drink a beer with."A sizeable quantity of americans came to recognize themselves in Bush Jr. when Bush Jr. stated he made decisions from the gut or heart. Voters were VERY comfortable with that because it didn't require thinking, it just 'felt' right.Personally, I want someone operating a nuclear power plant to be A LOT smarter than me. I want someone operating/surgery on me to be in the top 1% of his class. And I want the leader of my country to be so brilliant he/she would be beyond my understanding.In essence, I would want a president who is so smart that he/she wouldn't want to spend any of their free time with me.Kind'a like wanting to date a supermodel.

Well, as you know, that's how the game is played in the UK and they all play to the same rules. Absolutely no party is ever goiing to hang back because of arithmetic. A win is a win. The real issue is that not enough people cared enough to vote at all, let alone vote her out. Three times. That's really hard to get around. The cliche is that all political careers end in failure of course - it's the nature of the fight and the nature of those that get into the ring. The beauty of democracy is that our leaders CAN be kicked out. There are few Prime Ministers that retire gracefully without a murmur.The only one I can think of off-hand is that slimy git of a closet Catholic and hidden conservative, Blair who's a bigger toerag by a mile than Thatcher - at least with Thatcher she didn't hide the knife and stabbed you full in the chest.

That I never denied. My point is, and I'll say it again, that this being the case one cannot excuse Thatcher by saying that she was merely the instrument of the public will, because manifestly she wasn't.

I think we're labouring this somewhat. Thatcher would say that conservatives won more parliamentary seats than any other party, therefore Conservatives get to do their thing and they don't need to concern themselves about whether the majority of the population wants them or not -they won fair and square and have a mandate to do what they said they'd do if they won.(It's just a function of their being more than 2 parties to vote for - if there are other parties strong enough to split the vote, acheiving 51% of the vote is unlikely.)But I find myself defending Thatcher, which is not a position I'm comfortable with, so I'm going to stop now.

To vote her out of office they would have needed to vote for someone else with a realistic chance of beating her. Evidently not enough people were willing to do that. In three consecutive elections.But lacking 50%+ of the vote is really just a feature of a multi-party election. If I remember correctly only a single UK election since women were given the vote has resulted in a single party garnering over 50% of the vote. That was in 1931.So if we follow your logic no UK government except the one of 1931 has ever had a popular mandate........... Even if you want to argue that this is true it seems unnecessary to single out Thatcher given that it applies to every other Prime Minister (except one - Stanley Baldwin of 1931 - I just looked it up as the details had escaped me) I don't think she gave too much of a shit about having a popular mandate. Politicians will cite popular mandate when they can get away with it and it suits them to do so and ignore it (or proclaim themselves able to make "difficult decisons") when they can't. Thatcher isn't unique in this respect either. I do blame her. I also blame those who voted for her.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Me too.

One aspect of recent events that I quite enjoyed was watching those on the right who normally consider it their moral right, indeed obligation, to express their prejudices in whatever manner they choose and without regard for consequence clamouring for a song from a childrens movie to be banned from public broadcast.It gave me the opportunity to tell them that they were engaging in "political correctness gone mad"......Ding Dong.

No she didn't. Of those that expressed a preference, a plurality voted Conservative. Which is a minority of those who expressed a preference. Not sure what you're finiding so hard to grasp about this.

The problem is not with having more than two parties. The problem is with an absurd and anachronistic electoral system that means votes don't match a party's representation in Parliament. If Britain had a normal electoral system, the conservatives would have been forced to find allies, and wouldn't have been able to force through their programme against everyone else's complaints. The same would have gone for Blair.