Thatcher's Children

As even a bank still stands on the brink of nationalisation, it is clear that precisely six of Margaret Thatcher's doings have really endured: the Single European Act (with its abrogation of the principle of unanimity in the Council of Ministers), the Anglo-Irish Agreement (with its concession of joint sovereignty over Northern Ireland, a direct surrender to terrorism), the evisceration of local government, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, the replacement of O-levels with GCSEs, and the creation of the previously unthinkable phenomenon of millions of dole claimants at any given time.

The first two would be far easier to reverse than is generally supposed. Reversing the third would take more work, but could certainly be done. And the fourth and fifth could be swept away tomorrow. But the sixth is completely entrenched. Good luck to Gordon Brown following his latest recitation of the same old speech always delivered by any politician on this matter. But, as much as anything else, far too many people are employed to service mass unemployment for anything very much ever to be done about it. They would deny it, but they, more than anyone else at all, are Thatcher's Children.