Thatcher vs LKY - what kind of legacy will they leave behind?

OK, I have to thank my reader Winking Doll for suggesting this interesting topic. Now you would all have read in the news that former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher died last week. WD wrote:

"How about your forecast on what Singaporeans' reactions would be when Lee Kuan Yew passes on too? After all, he is 2 years older than The Iron Lady." 

Now that is an interesting question indeed. But first, let's start with Thatcher - she was a highly divisive figure who came to power at a time when Britain was in an economic crisis following the winter of discontent of 1978-1979 with widespread strikes and the economy falling apart. The Labour prime minister then James Callaghan screwed things up so badly that he almost guaranteed victory for Thatcher in the 1979 general elections. Frankly, anyone would have won against Callaghan, the Tories could have fielded a one-legged chicken as party leader that election and they would still have won given how Callaghan fucked the country up.

Now I could go on to talk about Thatcher's time in office but there have been plenty of articles in the media about her legacy, so I will not cover that issue. I want to focus on my personal reaction for now. I don't like her at all, I thought she was a crafty politician who did have her finer moments when it came to the economy (she rescued the mess that Callaghan left behind) and the Falklands war, but she did certain terrible things which meant that I could never ever like her. People still keep going on and on about her gender - that she was a woman who was our first and only prime minister to date, but it doesn't excuse the fact that she did some pretty horrible things. 

Thatcher was a racist. 

Now she was so anti-immigration that I would label her racist - she feared that Britain would be 'swamped' by immigrants from Pakistan in particular. I saw that as an opportunistic gesture on her part, after all - she took over a country in economic distress and it was convenient to blame immigrants for the unemployment then. It was a popular vote-winner, because the real problem was that labour unions were too powerful and demanding under the previous government and that led to numerous strikes, crippling the economy. Sure Thatcher cracked down on the unions as well, but her anti-immigration rhetoric gave the unemployed someone (other than her) to blame. It was a shrewd piece of political manoeuvring that too many people actually fell for - shame on them and shame on Thatcher.

And just for the record, Singaporeans today are far more racist and xenophobic than Brits - so please don't go on about Angmors being racist. Yes Thatcher was racist, but Singaporeans are far far worse. 

Thatcher was homophobic. 

Thatcher hated gays and she never made any effort to hid that fact.  Her government implemented the dreadful section 28 - which was a hateful piece of legislation to prevent teachers in British schools from acting in a way that may 'promote homosexuality' - which the wording was carefully chosen to make it sound as if it was to protect children some sexual immorality, in reality, it was just a blanket excuse to clamp down on anything pertaining to gay rights in the education arena. Thankfully, this nasty piece of legislation is history as it was repealed at last in 2003 - it was one of the good things that the last Labour government did though it took them way too long to get rid of it. I am very clear on where I stand on the issue of gay rights - so by that token, I hate Thatcher. 

Thatcher did too little in the face of AIDS

As the prime minister in the 1980s, like Ronald Regan, she was way too slow to act in the face of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. So much money needed to be spent on education, awareness and prevention and instead her government stood by and did too little - causing the deaths of many young people who didn't deserve to die like that. For crying out aloud, Princess Diana did far more than Thatcher ever did during the AIDS crisis. Thatcher had the blood of thousands on her hands, she was nothing short of a murderer in my opinion.

Thatcher was in cahoots with Pinochet and the Apartheid regime. 

Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet slaughtered about 3,000 of his political opponents, interned 80,000 and tortured a further 30,000 men, women and children - and he was good friends with Thatcher. She was willing to turn a blind eye to the murderous dictator's evil deeds as long as she got his support during the Falklands war. Thatcher also supported the Apartheid regime in South Africa - she had her own problems to deal with at home with the IRA and she was the ANC as a terrorist organization. 

I could go on, but that's four simple reasons why I positively hate Thatcher. Racist, homophobic, crafty and heartless - I don't care what she did with the economy, I could not forgive her or accept her on that basis as she is so fundamentally evil on those fronts. Yes there are things she should be given credit for - such as the economy, frankly, given the utter total mess Britain was in when she took power, things could have gone downhill all the way in the 1980s and Britain may have ended up more like Spain or Greece today; but we didn't. The UK reinvented itself and emerged at the end of the 1980s stronger, richer and more resilient. So for many people, as long as the economy was okay, they were more than happy to turn a blind eye to other moral issues like gay rights or racism. 

Maybe it is easy for me to look back at her legacy and point out why I hate her - but for those living in Britain then, the future looked uncertain to say the least and she did deliver on the economy, at least for most of the Brits then. Now I have spoken to many of my friends on the issue and have checked their Facebook status updates, here is just a sample of some of the things they have said about Thatcher upon her passing. 

"The fucking witch is dead. I celebrated that day, everyone in my family did. She destroyed the north of England." 

"I am struggling to find something nice to say about her... At least she was honest - she had no qualms about showing her true colours. She was pro-business and she liked millionaires, unlike the Labour Party sell-outs who invariably leave their people in the lurch."

"Can you remember when people actually celebrated when a former prime minister or president died? Never. Did Americans celebrate and hold street parties when Regan died? No. Maybe they will when George W Bush dies - but open your eyes, there are good reasons why she was so hated by so many." 

"Homophobic, racist, hateful... she will burn in hell. Fucking witch." 

"Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead is currently at no. 2 in the charts - yes that's how much the country hates her. But she knew that, she was under no illusions about the enemies she made along the way. Did she care? Is she the kind of woman to give a shit about what others thought of her? No." 

"The extreme reactions brought out by her death reminds us just how divided the country actually is, we may forget that sometimes. The social divide is huge when you look at the evidence."

"Everyone has their own reason for hating Thatcher - the working class hated her for the way she cracked down on the miners. The gays hated her for section 28. The Asians hated her for her views on immigrants. Those concerned about human rights hated her for Pinochet and Apartheid. She was the milk-snatcher who took away free school milk." 

"Fucking fucking evil fucking cunt. Her gravestone will need police protection for many people will want to deface it." 

"Google dead Thatcher jokes, some of them are brilliant." 

She's dead... it's party time to celebrate her death. 

You get the idea, for someone working with hedge funds, I sure have some pretty left-wing friends. Leaving aside my views on the economy and the business world for a moment, I will never compromise on my standards when it comes to issues like gay rights, human rights and racism - so yes, I am glad she is dead and I don't give a shit about being respectful to her for she was fucking evil when she was alive.

Ironically, when I remember Thatcher from the 1980s when I was a child growing up in Singapore, there wasn't this kind of hatred for her - she was in fact admired from a distance for the way she managed to tame the unruly unions and get an unstable British economy back on track. I suppose for Singaporeans, the economy was what they judged her on and for everything else, they were more than happy to just ignore her faults. Such is the nature of politics - depending on what you wish to judge her by, she was either wonderful or downright evil.

Now, onto LKY and Singapore. Yes LKY is 2 years older than Thatcher and who knows how many years he has left. How will Singaporeans react when he finally passes on? I expect the reaction to be far more muted than in the UK, given the nature of Singaporeans. Even those who disagreed with his policies will not speak up and protest for fear of being seen as disrespectful to the dead - that's a far more Asian thing. Now in the UK, there have been widespread celebrations since her death last week and perhaps culturally, we're a nation that is not afraid to offend and we value the freedom of speech. Nonetheless, even that may seem a little bit self-contradictory at times and we don't quite know how far we should allow ourselves to go as a nation.

Take the BBC for example. On one hand, they made the decision not to broadcast the song that is currently at no. 2 in the charts, "Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead" from the Wizard of Oz and instead only broadcast a very short portion of the chorus along with a documentary report. This fuelled anger amongst the citizens who may not have felt that strongly about Thatcher, but resented this kind of censorship over what is just music. On the other hand, in last week's episode of the famous panel show 'Have I Got News For You', we had (obviously left-wing) comedians making fun of Thatcher's dead on prime time television - as if they were trying to redress the balance. Now I can't imagine Singaporean comedians doing the same on Mediacorp after the death of LKY - it just wouldn't happen and any kind of anti-LKY sentiment would be confined entirely to the internet and international media from outside Singapore.

In my humble opinion though, I think the Singaporean public may be a lot kinder of LKY as the British public have been to Thatcher for a simple reason. LKY stepped down from the role of prime minister in 1990, was the senior minister from 1990 to 2004 and the minister mentor from 2004 to 2011 Now this is vital because the dissatisfaction amongst Singaporeans really arose in recent years, starting in the second half of the last decade. Whilst LKY is not without controversy, he could quite easily use the excuse that he wasn't really in charge when the wheels came off the bus (even many would argue that he was still pulling the puppet strings behind the scenes all this time). People will remember him for the good times in the 1980s and 1990s rather than for the period after 2005.

The attention would turn of course to his son, LHL and given how badly things have gone in the last few years, one would wonder naturally if he is the best man for the job. After all, the previous prime minister Goh Chok Tong was dubbed 'the seat warmer' by many who knew that LHL was being groomed for the job. Once again, history will be kind to Goh as he presided over boom times (1990 to 2004) before the 2008 recession hit hard. Of course, this father-son transition in politics is hardly unusual (the Kim family in North Korea, the Park family in South Korea, the Bush family in America) but the results are hardly desirable. We all know what a terrible disaster George W Bush turned out to be and the Korean peninsular is teetering on the edge of war because of Kim Jong Un. Why is keeping it in the family such a bad idea? Should politicians keep their children away from politics?

The answer is simple. Any politician should serve the people he is representing and if you have daddy in the background telling you, "this is what I would've done, this is what you ought to do etc" that really upsets the process especially when it is an old man who is basing his judgement on his experiences in the past rather than the present. As our world evolves ever more quickly thanks to the power of technology, older people become increasingly out of touch with the modern world. This is why the PAP fares so badly when it comes to their PR and communication as I suspect the people running that part of their corporate communications are over the age of 50 or 60 and simply do not understand (or even use) modern social media at all. They probably still exist in a world where they get up in the morning and read the Straits Times as their source of news whilst having breakfast, circa Singapore 1984.

Perhaps the biggest controversy that LKY would leave behind would be keeping it in the family rather than allowing the true process of democracy to flourish in Singapore. Of course, this wouldn't be an issue at all if the economy was booming and people had money in their bank accounts - such is the contract that Singaporeans have had with the PAP for years: we'll trust you and vote for you as long as you get the economy right. What happens if that contract is broken? We are clearly in uncharted waters here - would the people vote for change or have the PAP cultivated such faith and trust in the people that they will still have the mandate to do what they want? The last elections in 2011 suggests the latter - though one wonders if a similar result would be delivered in 2016 and a lot of that will really depend on what the economy does between now and then. In contrast, Thatcher's children kept out of politics and Mark Thatcher, her son, sparked off plenty of controversy of his own when he was arrested and trailed for being an arms dealer that was involved in the 2004 military coup in Equatorial Guinea.

The Lee family dominates politics in Singapore

So there you go - regardless of the mistakes that he may have made along the way, Singaporeans will be kind to LKY when he passes on eventually and we will see an outpouring of grief. His critics in Singapore will hold their tongue and not say anything in the period of mourning - but it will mark a significant milestone in Singaporean politics. After all, many believe that regardless of his title (or lack of), he still exerts a significance influence in Singaporean politics and will continue to do so until the very end. He has said in the 1988 National Day rally, "Even from my sick bed, even if you are going to lower me into the grave and I feel something is going wrong, I will get up."

Now this is where LKY and Thatcher differed greatly. After she was unceremoniously ousted from power from within her own party in 1990, Thatcher only remained as an MP for two more years (for Finchley) and then left politics altogether in 1992 at the age of 66. She remained active for the next ten years outside politics with various engagements until a series of strokes in 2002 forced her to retire altogether from public life for health reasons. Towards the end of her life, her health became increasingly frail and it was revealed in 2005 that she had been suffering from dementia. That is why she kept a fairly low profile since 2002 as her family and PR team didn't want the public to see her as an old woman suffering from dementia and they wanted the public to remember her as a confident prime minister who steered the country out of economic turmoil in the 1980s. LKY on the other hand, enjoyed much better health than Thatcher. He remained far more involved in Singaporean politics and continues to do so.

What will Singaporeans remember LKY for? Probably for delivering on the economy in the 1970s and 1980s. 

So there you go, that's my comparison of Thatcher vs LKY. Her funeral will take place tomorrow in central London and it will be interesting to see the public demonstrations that may take place to celebrate her death. There is talk of "death parties" happening tomorrow - look out for those in the news and I will keep you updated. Any questions or comments, don't be shy - let me know what you think in the comments section below, thanks.