John L. O’Sullivan reviews five (count’em, five) new books about Baroness Thatcher. O’Sullivan himself was an adviser to Thatcher and helped with her memoirs. This point jumped out at me:
Owen Harries theorized some years ago that Thatcher was seen by many people around the world, foes as well as friends, as being more important than Reagan in spreading the free market revolution, just as Reagan was more important in winning the Cold War. She had successfully transformed a far more socialist, and much weaker, economy. Her most distinctive contribution to the market revolution, namely privatization, was more widely imitated worldwide than any single element of Reaganomics. And she was a more intellectually persuasive advocate of market economics than Reagan because she had initially honed her arguments before a sophisticated and skeptical audience in her own country (and in her own party) in a political culture that greatly prizes debating. She had therefore become an international symbol of free market economics, “neoliberalism,” and all the rest–and the system she symbolized ha[s] apparently just crashed.
But do not worry, my capitalist friends. O’Sullivan is confident that the Baroness’ reputation will weather this storm.