Tarzan's Tribute

I pity the poor Private Eye writer who has to try and satirise the guest list for Margaret Thatcher's funeral. The world's largest ever gathering of white trash. But I fail to see the irony in the fact that, as a living veteran of her Cabinet, Michael Heseltine has at least been invited to attend.

Similar even in hairdo, both were essentially end of the pier turns, in vulgar taste. At the age of 80, he was still hawking his act around Question Time and Any Questions in the last few weeks. He was directly responsible for privatising more of the British economy than any other Minister, ever. She signed the Single European Act.

However, he does have one up on her. He may have been in the Welsh Guards so briefly that he has never yet learned how to tie his beloved Guards tie correctly. (What does it say, since there must be something, that he and Geoffrey Howe are both Posh Welsh?) But he least he does have a technical entitlement to wear it, as he loves so very much to do.

Whereas she was never in any of the Armed Forces. Yet she is to be buried with full military honours by more than seven hundred Army, Navy and Air Force personnel who would apparently have had nothing else to do that day. Thatcher is effectively being given the made up uniform and the self-awarded medals of an Idi Amin. Although even he had served in the King's African Rifles and then in the Ugandan Army.

Grandees should indicate their continuing distaste by attending this Ceremonial, but not State, Funeral wearing their swords after all. Because they have them. So they can. I trust that those watching from Saint Helena will wave their British passports, later restored, at the passing coffin of the Prime Minister who took them away.

If Thatcher gets this merely for the brief conflict in the Falkland Islands, then what in heaven's name are we to expect when Blair goes to the Great Warrior Armchair in the Sky?