IGNATIUS ON THATCHER:

... it was Thatcher who opened the door for modern Britain. 

She wielded the wrecking ball that demolished old ideas and barriers, on the right and left. When people speak of Barack Obama or anyone else as a potentially transforming political leader, I ask myself: Does this person have the raw toughness and hunger for change of a Maggie Thatcher? 

Almost always, the answer is no.

... People talk about transformational politicians. But watching Margaret Thatcher take down the British class system was an education in how it’s really done. It required the radical vision and iron will of someone who genuinely abhorred the status quo. 

Thatcher demolished the two conservative pillars of British society: the labor unions that held the parliamentary Labor Party in bondage, and the upper-class Tory leaders who resembled the benign but hapless relics of “Downton Abbey.” It’s hard to say which side was more hidebound and resistant to change, the unions or the aristocrats. They were unwitting partners in Britain’s paralysis. 

By breaking the power of the unions and the old Tory elite, Thatcher opened the way for a politically powerful British middle class. The universality of the middle class is America’s enduring national myth, so it’s hard for us to appreciate how narrow and precarious it was in Britain.

RIP.