BAFFLED BY POLITICS

By Jason Moore WHY has Margaret Thatcher become so important to the Labour Party? Just weeks after becoming the new Prime Minister Gordon Brown asks Mrs. T round for tea and former Thatcherites are all claiming that Brown will continue with the Thatcher revolution. Labour Party supporters in the North of England and Scotland must be over-the-moon that the new PM is courting the woman they hold responsible for the decline of their livelihood and the end of the more traditional industries. Has the Labour Party moved to the centre so much that they now want the support of Margaret Thatcher? I am baffled by the whole thing. The Conservative Party ditched her in the early 1990s because they feared that she would cost them the next election. If Brown is not careful the same thing could happen to him. Margaret Thatcher's greatest achievement was to crush the power of the trade unions, which funnily enough form the basis of Brown's Labour Party. Should Conservative David Cameron feel rather upset that the “Iron Lady” is with the other side? No, I don't think so because while Margaret Thatcher was popular in the 1980s (in some parts of the country) in others she was deeply unpopular even among some Tory voters. If Brown thinks he is scoring points against Cameron, he might be mistaken and in fact he just might score an own goal.