Word: thatchers
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Given the nature of the victory -- a far cry from the comfortable majorities commanded before voters turned against the Thatcher Revolution -- the Conservatives plainly were not handed a mandate to forge ahead with a program that has plunged Britain into its longest, deepest recession since World War II. Rather, the Tories can only conclude that they remain more trusted than Labour to curb 9.4% unemployment, high interest rates and the spate of business bankruptcies and closures. Ultimately, Labour's attempts to convince voters that it had shed its socialist spots failed. The party's renunciation of its old high-taxing...
That is not surprising. The world has changed dramatically since the tidy divisions of the Thatcher era: the Soviet Union has disintegrated; nuclear jitters have eased; socialism has been discredited. No longer able to draw sharp ideological differences among themselves, Britain's three largest parties scrambled after the same political turf. All tinkered around the edges of the National Health Service and educational programs. The Conservatives pledged to lower taxes, while Labour promised some hikes -- but the differences were not as pronounced as in the past. The most far-reaching change was championed by the Liberal Democrats, who sought...
That's when they catapulted Maggie Thatcher and her Conservative Party to a parliamentary majority in 1979, one year before Americans elected Ronald Reagan president. And while the Brits went for Thatcher twice-more over the next decade, we Americans followed them by re-electing Reagan in 1984 and then Bush...
...just last Thursday, they went for the Conservatives for the fourth straight election, keeping 10 Downing Street the home of Prime Minister John Major, Thatcher's successor as the Conservative Party leader...
There was also the personal factor in the election. While personality was probably not as important as substantive economic issues, voters found Major dull though inoffensive, compared to the flamboyant Thatcher who had led the Conservatives to their past three election victories...