Los enlaces tras la muerte de Thatcher hoy, a los 87 años de edad, son incontables. He recopilado unos cuantos de interés, y la lista va creciendo según leo más. Cualquier recomendación, a favor o en contra del personaje, es bienvenida.
The Guardian tiene una galería de 40 fotos con la vida de la ex primera ministra, una colección de frases célebres (el Telegraph tiene otra) una interesantísima pieza en el Datablog con 15 gráficos sobre cómo cambió el Reino Unido durante su época.
El obituario del Guardian, de Anne Perkins, es increíblemente neutro. Recorre su vida política de una forma impecablemente equidistante. Sin embargo, su editorial es francamente duro: «The lady and the land she leaves behind«. «Her legacy is public division, private selfishness and a cult of greed that together shackle the human spirit».
The Economist: «A cut above the rest«. Un balance de luces (generalmente fuera9 y sombras (más bien dentro). [«She was also an enemy of big government who presided over a huge expansion of it»]
– El obituario del NYT lo firma Joseph Gregory: «Margaret Thatcher, Who Remade Britain, Dies at 87«. No especialmente brillante, pero con mucha información al modo habitual del Times.
– Roger Bootle escribe en The Telegraph un larguísimo texto sobre «The economic achievements and legacy of Thatcherism«. Me ha gustado mucho. Presenta a una primera ministra que no era una «intelectual» pero sí «ideological by nature».»Patriota», pero no «nacionalista económica». Y dice que «Thatcherism is usually depicted as extremely right wing, but whether this is accurate depends upon your analysis of what the spectrum, on which you may be at one end or the other, is all about. The best way of understanding Thatcherism is to appreciate that it was fundamentally anticonservative. Indeed, on some definitions of the political spectrum, it was essentially left-wing. It was not just radical; it was revolutionary».
– Andreas Whittan Smith, en The Independent, escribe sobre «A heroine and a hate figure‘». Destacando todas las batallas que libró y señalando a Europa como su principal fracaso (además de su caída en el 90, claro).
– Lord Douglas Hurd sobre su papel y el de otros miembros de sus gabinetes para matizar el thatcherismo. Working alongside a political titan.
– John Rentoul cree que Thatcher salvó la economía británica. Pero a un coste (social) demasiado alto. [It wasn’t necessary to push unemployment that high – and so much of it hidden on sickness benefit – to end excessive trade union power].
– Editorial del Wall Street Journal: «Not for Turning. The woman who saved Britain with a message of freedom». «`Thatcher died in London Monday, at age 87, having earned her place among the greats. This is not simply because she revived Britain’s economy, though that was no mean achievement. Nor is it because she held office longer than any of her predecessors, though this also testifies to her political skill. She achieved greatness because she articulated a set of vital ideas about economic freedom, national self-respect and personal virtue, sold them to a skeptical public and then demonstrated their efficacy».
– Bruce Barlett, en 2011, sobre el legado económico de la Dama de Hierro: «The Legend of Margaret Thatcher«. [While Mrs. Thatcher is a towering figure in British political history, well deserving of admiration, the conservative legend about her time in power is at odds with the facts. In this legend, she was even more aggressive than Reagan in cutting taxes and the welfare state. But that is not true].
ACTUALIZACIONES
– Robert Evans, que fue corresponsal de Reuters en Moscú durante 10 años, recuerda cómo introdujo en occidente la expresión «Dama de Hierro». «The Iron Lady»: my part in her ascent«.
– Chris Dillow (vía Jorge San Miguel) tiene un post hoy sobre cosas positivas de Thatcher (aunque no le guste nada el personaje… y un post de 2005 muy muy crítico con sus medidas económicas, la falta de ellas o su motivación.
– David Frum, que está posteando de forma compulsiva, tiene una entrada titulada: «How Margaret Thatcher Saved Britain and Changed the World«. No justifica el título, pero apunta algunas ideas sobre Thatcher y las minorías, su postura sobre cambio climático y otros temas que no gustarán mucho a los conservadores de hoy.
MÁS ACTUALIZACIONES
– Charles Powell, secretario privado de Margaret Thatcher entre 1982 y 1991, escribe en el Daily Mail sobre su carácter y su falta de tacto diplomático.
– Bill Keller, ex director del NYT, escribe sobre «Maggie and Gorby«. Sobre su relación y en cierto modo simpatía y sus efectos. Y enlaza esta maravilla: la transcripción de la entrevista de Thatcher en la televisión soviética en 1987.
– Ian McEwan: «Margaret Thatcher: we disliked her and we loved it«. [«For those of us who were dismayed by her brisk distaste for that cosy state-dominated world, it was never enough to dislike her. We liked disliking her. She forced us to decide what was truly important.»]
– Bill Emmott, ex director de The Economist: «The Iron Lady que Woke Britain Up«? `[The real measure of a leader’s greatness is whether, by their hard work and sheer force of personality, they changed politics, changed their country, and even changed the way their citizens think about themselves. That was true of Mrs, later Baroness, Thatcher. She made a lot of mistakes, and in her final few years as prime minister began to do more damage than good. But she woke Britain up and, taking her 11 years in office as a whole, changed her country hugely for the better.]
Y sobre todo, y ésta es la clave: «Thatcherism” was first of all an ideology of liberalism, of reducing the state’s role in society and the economy and increasing the role of markets and individuals. But also it was an ideology of opportunity, of self-realisation, of meritocracy.»
– Y hay que leer a Andrew Sullivan en Thatcher, Liberator. Cometió muchos y gravísimos errores. Dividió al país en dos. Todavía lo hace. Pero lo liberó de una asfixia insoportable. [«I was a teenage Thatcherite, an uber-politics nerd who loved her for her utter lack of apology for who she was. I sensed in her, as others did, a final rebuke to the collectivist, egalitarian oppression of the individual produced by socialism and the stultifying privileges and caste identities of the class system.»].
Y también: «Thatcher’s economic liberalization came to culturally transform Britain. Women were empowered by new opportunities; immigrants, especially from South Asia, became engineers of growth; millions owned homes for the first time; the media broke free from union chains and fractured and multiplied in subversive and dynamic ways. Her very draconian posture provoked a punk radicalism in the popular culture that changed a generation. The seeds of today’s multicultural, global London – epitomized by that Olympic ceremony – were sown by Thatcher’s will-power.»
– El texto de John Cassidy, otro británico con un backgroung similar a Sullivan o McEwan, y que salía a manifestarse contra ella, es estupendo también. «Maggie and Me: How Thatcher Changed Britain«.
– Yuliya Tymoshenko desde su prisión: «The Iron Lady as Liberator«. Y en español, via Droblo, aquí.
– David Brooks: «The Vigorous Virtues«. `
The daughter of a small grocer, she led a fervent bourgeois Risorgimento. She was the voice of the ambitious middle class. She lionized the self-made striver. Loving tidiness, she checked to see if the space above the picture frames was properly dusted. She championed a certain sort of individual, one who possessed what the writer Shirley Robin Letwin called the Vigorous Virtues: “upright, self-sufficient, energetic, adventurous, independent-minded, loyal to friends and robust against foes.” If her predecessors stood for consensus and the endless negotiation of interests over beer and sandwiches, Thatcher stood for steadfast conviction on behalf of the national good»… «At a time when others were sliding toward moral relativism, Thatcher stood for individual responsibility, moral self-confidence and often, it has to be admitted, self-righteous certitude.»
MÁS ARTÍCULOS TODAVÍA
– Niall Ferguson, nacido en 1964 y adolescente frustrado cuando la Dama de Hierro llegó al poder, era entonces un «punk Tory». Hoy es un ex punk Tory eternamente agradecido a la ex premier por devolver la esperanza al país: «Margaret Thatcher: Punk Savior«.
– Russell Brand, actor y cómico, tiene también una larga pieza en The Guardian sobre Thatcher titulada. «I always felt sorry for her children‘». No es un texto favorable, pero tampoco una crítica furibunda. Al menos en apariencia. Lo que subyace es algo así como una sensación de desasosiego por ella y su época que el propio autor no es capaz de entender ni explicar. Y que sin embargo, logra transmitir. Vía Rodrigo Orihuela.
Maven Trap 