See NewsBusters story on this. Via SkyNews (Drudge)
…Britain’s Iron Lady, has died after suffering a stroke at the age of 87.
Her children Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother had died peacefully following a stroke this morning.
Speaking to Sky News, spokesman and friend Lord Bell, who announced her death, said: “We’ll never see the like of her again. She was one of the great prime ministers of all time and transformed people’s lives.”
He described the former prime minister, a grocer’s daughter from Grantham, as the greatest leader of the Conservative Party with the exception of Winston Churchill.
[….]
Baroness Thatcher, Britain’s first and only woman prime minister, had become increasingly frail and was suffering ill health in recent years.
Liberal policies view lower income for the poor and the richer as a good thing as long as the gap is closer… our same struggle today. These brief exchanges took place during Margaret Thatcher’s last speech in the House of Commons on 22 November 1990. Read the complete transcript for this speech here.
She was admitted to hospital shortly before Christmas where she underwent an operation to remove a growth from her bladder but was allowed to return home before new year.
Prime minister between 1979 and 1990, she has been credited with transforming a nation in one decade, putting Britain back among the leading industrial nations of the world.
She became loved and loathed in equal measure as she crushed the unions and privatised vast swathes of British industry, as she led the Tories to three election victories.
Tough beyond measure, she was nicknamed the Iron Lady by a Russian journalist in 1976 for her opposition to Soviet communism. It is a moniker that stuck and was the title of a film in which Meryl Streep took the title role, which was released in 2011.
She was also memorably described by the then French president Francois Mitterrand with the back-handed compliment that she had the “eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe”.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said: “Margaret Thatcher was one of the defining figures in modern British politics.
“Whatever side of the political debate you stand on, no-one can deny that as prime minister she left a unique and lasting imprint on the country she served.
“She may have divided opinion during her time in politics but everyone will be united today in acknowledging the strength of her personality and the radicalism of her politics.”
Despite her toughness, few will forget the pictures of Baroness Thatcher leaving Downing Street for the last time with her husband, Sir Denis, and tears in her eyes.