Any Old Iron?

One does not like agree with Michael Heseltine, but he was right about Margaret Thatcher on Question Time last night.

Was she “the Iron Lady” when, in early 1981, her initial pit closure programme was abandoned within two days of a walkout by the miners? Or when, as Heseltine pointed out, she had one of her closest allies, Nicholas Ridley, negotiate a transfer of sovereignty over the Falkland Islands to Argentina, to be followed by a lease-back arrangement, until the Islanders, the Labour Party and Tory backbenchers forced her to back down?

Was she “the Iron Lady” when, within a few months of election on clear commitments with regard to Rhodesia, she simply abandoned them at the Commonwealth Conference in Lusaka? When, having claimed that Britain would never give up Hong Kong, she took barely twenty-four hours to return to Planet Earth and effect a complete U-turn? When she took just as little time to move from public opposition to public support of Spanish accession to the Western European Union? Or when she gave up monetarism completely during her second term?

One could go on, and on, and on.