Margaret Thatcher - She changed the world we live in

Though it’s nearly a quarter of a century since Margaret Thatcher stood down as leader of Britain’s Conservative party in 1990, and more than half a century since she was first elected to the House of Commons in 1959, her death yesterday, at 87, showed she remains utterly divisive.

Just as she had a clear position on nearly every issue, most people have a clear, black-or-white position on her.

Nevertheless, even her detractors acknowledge that she inspired generations of people to become involved in politics. Some because they so admired her policies, achievements and steely, almost manic, determination. Still more because they believed that she, as Prime Minister David Cameron said yesterday, “saved” Britain by arresting an accelerating slide into a kind of stultifying chaos made almost inevitable by big government and state-owned industries be the prevailing system capitalist, communist or socialist.