You have to be approaching your mid-50s or older to have been of voting age during Margaret Thatcher’s period as prime minister. Only a third of those of us alive today were adults when she finally left Downing Street in November 1990. The proportion who remember the 11 years that Thatcher spent in Downing Street is even smaller.
For at least the other two-thirds of Britons, Thatcher’s is a name from the past, and little more. The fact she would have been 100 next Monday only emphasises the large gulf that now separates her era from this one. Yet the centenary could be a helpful moment all the same. It could provide a contemporary chance to reflect on what she really means – and does not mean – for modern Britain.
