Maguire's Tyne Turns Blue

Kevin Maguire claimed last year that "back home on Tyneside at the weekend, I found many a Labour voter eagerly awaiting the day [the] former premier is dead and buried." Margaret Thatcher will therefore no doubt be very pleased to learn that Maguire's hometown, where he helps the local Labour Party, is a Conservative gain.

You won't find so many Labour voters on the Tyne today...

Socialist Worker : "Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, In! In! In!"

Not quite their new chant, but the latest edition of Socialist Worker, (the required reading for mockney speaking, public school educated, lefty students) does compare Gordon unfavourably to Margaret Thatcher. He cuts taxes for the bosses and raises taxes on the workers...

Maggie, say the Trotskyites, cut taxes for those on low incomes, Gordon hammers taxes onto the low paid. So can we expect the SWP to update their old chant?

Come Back Thatcher!

This poll result is phenomenal:

YouGov asked voters who they would choose from a list of politicians "at the peak of their powers" to be prime minister. Maggie Thatcher was the most popular with 27% wanting her back.

Brown was unpopular even among Labour voters: 43% of whom wanted Blair back, even Tony Benn was wanted by 17% of the party's voters, Brown was the first choice of only 10% of Labour voters.

Remember what Hutton and Miliband said about Gordon? They were so right...

UPDATE : Guido forgot to quote the most important statistic, a mere 5% of all voters would rather have Gordon Brown as PM from the list of former PMs given.

Comrade Maguire's Obsessive Maggie Death Fantasy

The Mirror's Kevin Maguire has a pseudo-working-class-warrior writing style requiring him to always refer to "Druggy Dave" the Bambi-killing Etonian toff. His incisive analysis of the political dynamic clearly owes a lot to a youthful close reading of the Beano. In his columns he talks down to his readers in a patronising style that assumes Mirror readers are stupid in a manner that, by way of contrast, Richard Littlejohn would never dream of doing. It is not a style that he uses in the Guardian or the New Statesman. It is all good knock-about stuff, Maguire is after all a Labour party propagandist first and a journalist second. He is, without doubt, far better at the former than the latter.

His pathological hatred of the Tories becomes totally unhinged when it comes to Margaret Thatcher. Time and time again he shares his death fantasies with readers. Today again, under the pretext of a theatre review, he reminds us that he will celebrate her death. He describes her as a harridan who should not be afforded a state funeral. His poisonous "death to class enemies" attitude reveals all you need to know about Kevin Maguire's politics and nature. In another time and place you sense that as a commissar he would have happily dealt out revolutionary justice to class enemies - with a bullet.

Judge Rules Dead Thatcherite Bonkers

A judge has ruled that a man who made a bequest leaving the Conservative party £8.3m was not of sane mind. Pharmaceutical mogul Branislav Kostic believed Margaret Thatcher was "the greatest leader of the free world in history" and that she would save the world from the "satanic monsters and freaks".

How can that be? These are self-evident truths for the members of Conservative Way Forward, self-appointed keepers of the Thatcherite flame. Guido bumped into CWF's Mark Allatt at the Tory Party conference, he felt the police had over-reacted to his publicity stunt - parking a 12-tonne tank outside the conference centre and unloading uniformed actors carrying AK-47 machine guns. "They were deactivated AK-47s" he protested incredulously. Not mad at all...

What Did Gordon Learn Today from Thatcher?

The sheer audacity of Team Brown is breathtaking. Are they really trying to portray him as the heir to Thatcher? It is all very well claiming to be a conviction politician, but what if they are the wrong convictions?

Remind yourself of just two examples of when Gordon was on the wrong side of a big battle born of conviction.

Facing down Soviet Communism - Brown was opposed to installing the Cruise and Pershing missiles that the Soviets feared most and could not afford to match. This brought them to the negotiating table.

Miners Strike - the crucial and decisive battle for the economic well being of the country - at the time he opposed Thatcher's determination to end once and for all Scargill's blackmail. He never supported the rights of working miners who faced harassment and violence. When David Wilkie was killed by striking NUM miners there was no condemnation from Gordon Brown.

The list is long. Team Brown is doing this not out of conviction, but for pure spin...

Thatcher v Brown : Rallying the Troops

Margaret Thatcher sent a message of support to British troops on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Liberation of the Falklands. Even though her voice betrays the effects of a stroke, her words still carry conviction. "Fortune does, in the end, favour the brave. And it is Britain's good fortune that none are braver than our armed forces."

Brown went to Baghdad last week and told the troops they were getting a below inflation 2% pay rise. Not inspiring.

BBC audio here.

Good News, Bad News for the Monkey

Well he'll wake up pleased to know that Hilary Benn, for whom he is campaigning, is according to YouGov, the favourite for deputy amongst Labour party members and trade unionists. He'll also discover that Margaret Thatcher is still alive despite his report to the contrary. Hungover?

HMS Margaret Thatcher

Guido can not bring himself to even publicise the name of the non-entity MP calling for Maggie's new statue to be removed from the Members Lobby. At the unveiling ceremony even the speaker, Gorbals Martin, graciously eulogised the woman who saved Britain from socialist decline. For Guido, bronze is not enough.

The Hitch has come up with a brilliant proposal to honour the woman who sent the Royal Navy half way round the world to defeat a fascist junta and unshackled Britain's economy, in doing so she restored the nation's pride and international reputation. Name a warship after her.

Guido has done some research, and discovered that the Navy's newest and most advanced Type 45 Destroyers come into service in 2009. Costing a billion each they will be the pride of the Navy and the most powerful warships ever to fly the naval ensign. Can there be a more fitting tribute to the lady? God willing she will still be with us to launch her ship in 2009.

Britons never shall be slaves - HMS Margaret Thatcher

Iron Lady No More

Fear not, she lives, and now she has been cast in bronze. A full size statue of Baroness Thatcher will be placed in the Members' Lobby today. The statue was commissioned by the Advisory Committee on Works of Art in 2003 from sculptor Antony Dufort.

The statue's position means that every politician who passes by will have to look up to her. Rightly so.

The Thatcher Legend

A co-conspirator emails to point out the still continuing obssession with Maggie. Despite the fact that first-time voters at the next election will not have even been born during the Thatcher years, the legend lives on.

The co-conspirator points to the word-count in the papers for last week alone:

The Times - 3 Thatchers, 1 Thatcherite

Daily Telegraph - 13 Thatchers, 0 Thatcherites

FT - 8 Thatchers, 0 Thatcherites

The Independent - 12 Thatchers, 0 Thatcherites

The Guardian - 31 Thatchers, 5 Thatcherites

Guardianistas still can't get over her, can they?

Guido feels we are about due a Thatcher revival, Brit Art trendies will soon no doubt be wearing ironic Thatcher T-shirts around Hoxton Square. Thatcher is surely due to become "cool" in 2007.