Politics

Thatcher's funeral: essential reading

Prospect's pick of the best reading—and listening

April 17, 2013
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Prospect picks the best articles on Thatcher from today's papers

What Titanium Ed Miliband and the Iron Lady have in commonby Mary Riddell (The Daily Telegraph)

Amid the clamour from the right that David Cameron should be more like Thatcher, Mary Riddell argues that today’s pretenders to the Thatcher legacy are Ed Miliband and Nigel Farage

Cameron cannot revive Thatcherism by Richard Vinen (Financial Times)

Meanwhile, the historian Richard Vinen explains why a simple Tory resuscitation of Thatcherism is impossible. “The alliance of economic liberalism, social conservatism and nationalism that underpinned the Tories in the 1980s no longer exists,” he writes, and the party has ceded the latter two causes to UKIP

Today we bury the last prime minister of WWII (£) by Daniel Finkelstein (The Times)

Thatcher was the last prime minister born before the second world war began. For Daniel Finkelstein, this shaped her worldview decisively. The prime ministers that followed her were baby boomers who did not share her view that “the balance power in Europe [was] the very greatest of issues.”

It’s time to bury not just Thatcher—but Thatcherismby Seumas Milne (The Guardian)

Milne offers a rather different perspective. He argues that Thatcher didn’t achieve the economic wonders for which it has been credited, and portrays the British people as largely hostile to Thatcherism

Prospect also recommends

Night Waveswith Peter Hitchens, Will Self, Edwina Currie, Dominic Sandbrook, Mark Littlewood, Selina Todd and Edith Hall (BBC Radio 3)

A lively, entertaining discussion with figures from all ends of the political spectrum