An awful gaffe

Margaret Thatcher's funeral yesterday was held with appropriate dignity and a minimum of disruptive demonstrations. It had been my intention to say in this Viewpoint that the event should be followed by a moratorium of six months or so during which speculation on which policies she would have followed if she were still alive and in office is brought to an end. It is a fun “what if?” game but it bears no relation to reality more than twenty years after she left Downing Street. Unfortunately that idea went up in flames when in an extraordinarily ill-judged BBC Radio 4 Today interview yesterday before the funeral David Cameron returned to the political track by saying that “in a sense we are all Thatcherites now” and that “when she came into power the old consensus was failing so she created a new consensus” and that she “ended division by winning the argument.” I have twice accused David Cameron of running a “political funeral” and although I did not like doing so this crass interview shows that it was just what he was doing. I notice that yesterday James Kirkup of the Daily Telegraph picked up this story and said: “If Mr Cameron finds himself accused of wrapping himself in Lady Thatcher's shroud he will have only himself to blame.” I think Cameron will have difficulty in living this gaffe down.