Margaret Thatcher was immensely popular, winning three consecutive General Elections with substantial majorities, despite making lots of hard decisions which upset entrenched vested interests. She made Britain a better place for everyone. A country we could all be proud of.

These days she sometimes does not get the acclaim that she richly deserves. This is because the left are poor losers so the largely socialist school teachers and the leftie BBC have been running a propaganda war against her. Shame on them.

Let us look at just three of her achievements:

Margaret Thatcher saved Great Britain

When she came to power in 1979 our country was in very dire straits. The so called “Post War Consensus” had made Britain into a socialist state with a huge public sector and many highly inefficient nationalised industries. This alone dragged the country down, we had only a small private sector to generate the wealth to pay for everything. But things were made worse by over powerful trade unions whose leaders were not really interested in their members, they were too busy trying to create a communist command economy, with them in charge. So they caused the maximum possible economic disruption. This cost millions of jobs, broke thousands of companies and destroyed entire industries. No government had been able to stand up to them.

Margaret Thatcher came to power immediately after the winter of discontent, an incredible 29,474,000 working days were lost in 1979. Hospitals were picketed to prevent patients getting in, dead bodies were unburied. The economy was trashed. Britain was in a downwards spiral to oblivion.

Margaret Thatcher and her ministers had the intellectual ideas and the strength of purpose to fix this. It took a long time and many battles. The work still isn’t finished. But Britain was transformed into a successful nation again.

Margaret Thatcher improved the lives of billions of people

Margaret Thatcher liked ideas and her initial source for many was Sir Keith Joseph, a powerful intellectual. In addition she studied the Chicago School of economics, especially Milton Friedman and also the Austrian School, especially Friedrich Hayek. From these and other influences she distilled her own economic and political theory which we call Thatcherism and which is how most of the world works today. Billions of people are benefiting hugely. It is only really North Korea and Cuba which are not Thatcherite with Venezuela straying a lot from the true path. Just look how badly these three countries are doing without her guidance.

Wealth is generated by capitalism in markets, this is what pays for everything, including all the other -isms.  Thatcher sought to maximise this wealth creation by setting business free. Less state, less tax, fewer barriers to trade, removal of vested interests and cronyism, availability of capital, efficient markets, competition and access to customers.

When Brown and Blair came to power they forgot all this and stagnated the country for 13 years, increasing the state to 52% of GDP, increasing taxation and putting up many barriers to enterprise, ending with an immense recession. The Conservatives are starting to fix Britain again, it is an immense job. And they are doing it by bringing back what are now the well proven tenets of Thatcherism.

Margaret Thatcher ended the Cold War

People today forget what it was like, knowing that thermonuclear warheads could rain down on us at any minute. And for all the hundreds of millions of people in the huge Soviet empire there was a quality of life that was only a little above subsistence, except for the chosen few. Thatcher determined to bring this to an end. Her weapons were propagating knowledge whilst exerting huge economic and military pressure. She knew that we could not do this alone so she roped in the USA, and most notably Ronald Regan. Together they applied so much pressure that cracks appeared in the edifice. They kept the pressure on and soon the whole façade came tumbling down. More than a score of countries were liberated. The world became a far better place. And we could sleep in our beds at night.

If Margaret Thatcher were running things today she would have no trouble in dealing with the gangster Putin. He would not have the mental strength to stand up to her.