Word: thatcherism
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...dispirited Labor strategists, the theme of "Headmistress" Thatcher bullying her colleagues was a heaven-sent chance to go briefly on the offensive. Within hours, Labor was making the Prime Minister herself a campaign issue, repackaging the toughness that made her the "resolute" leader in the Falklands war into domineering bossiness. The Tory Cabinet, Healey argued, consists of "neutered zombies," and Thatcher would be "intolerable" if she won big. The S.D.P.'s Jenkins put it more starkly. Five more years of Thatcher "still cocooned in her own self-righteousness," he warned, would divide the country. "The revulsion would be such...
...Thatcher's strategists see no reason to decry opposition tactics that they believe will boomerang. "Let them push Maggie to the front of the campaign," chortles one adviser. "We'll just say, 'Now there's an idea-we never thought of that!' And we will then ask people, 'Whom do you want as a leader?' " The Iron Lady, for her part, relishes the fray. "Yes, my style is one of vigorous leadership," she proclaims. "Yes, I do believe in trying to persuade people that the things I believe in are the things they...
...criticisms, Thatcher has been surging ahead in surveys that rank the rival party leaders by preference as "the best Prime Minister": she scores 48%, vs. 22% for Steel, 16% for Foot and 7% for Jenkins. Much of this, another poll notes, stems from the fact that Britons are preparing to vote for negative rather than positive reasons, against Foot rather than for Thatcher. Certainly one of her biggest allies is Labor's weakness...
...especially over unemployment, which stands at a postwar high of 13.6%. According to one poll, even voters between 18 and 21, who suffer an especially high jobless rate, plan to vote Tory rather than Labor by nearly 3 to 2, apparently because they feel the jobs crisis is not Thatcher's fault...
...polling approaches, Thatcher's lead will probably diminish. Her lieutenants are particularly concerned about the possibility of an anti-landslide vote and a "why bother to vote at all since she is bound to win" syndrome. But the lead is unlikely to disappear, given the turmoil within Labor and the assumption that a vote for the Alliance is a vote wasted. London bookmakers are offering odds of 8 to 1 that Britain is on the verge of five more years of Thatcherism. Last week that assessment sent the London stock market and the value of the pound soar...