As has already been widely covered.

At his monthly prime ministerial press conference in an obvious attempt to exploit potential Conservative embarrassment over the Jurassic mumblings of the13th Marquess of Lothian, Sauron likened himself to former Conservative prime minister Baroness Thatcher as a "conviction politician".


"I think whatever disagreements you have with her about certain policies, there was a large amount of unemployment at the time which perhaps could have been dealt with better, we have got to understand that she saw the need for change”.

"I also admire the fact that she's a conviction politician, she stands very clearly for principles, I believe and I've said before that I'm also a conviction politician”.

Previous quotes by the cycloptic one about Lady Thatcher include some of the following highlights

‘Poverty does not concern Mrs Thatcher’

‘Mrs Thatcher . . . wanted to eliminate the public sector entirely from whole areas of national life’

‘She plans to eradicate…. education, health and social services as we know them’

Although at first glance this looks like an attempt to rewrite his views for short term political gain one could argue that there may be more consistency than is at first apparent.

After all his poverty targets have been missed by a country mile, whole areas of the public sector are in the process of eliminated with local hospitals under the threat of cuts or closure and education, health and social services are being bureaucratised into forms that barely function.

To say that she saw the need for change and rightly acted upon it is absolutely correct. By implication this is also suggesting that Broon also sees himself as some sort of change which is odd considering his most recent previous employment.

And whilst these comments were obviously devised to embarrass ‘Dave’ I wonder in the longer run whether this might be Broon’s Toynbee moment. I’d love to know what the Scottish and Northern comrades made of his recent comments.

Facetious commentary aside, I don’t believe that Lady Thatcher was infallible and I don’t think that Broon is unalloyed evil (although close), but you, Sir, are no Maggie. Love her or not she was the towering colossus of late 20th Century politics and framed the world that Major, Blair and Broon now operate within. Brown is a mere pygmy, a lucky one so far, but the cranes are coming home to roost.