So as you are inevitably aware, Margaret Thatcher died yesterday. Which triggered an ever-expanding discussion of her complicated legacy, covering all the things she was loved and loathed for.
I am not going to join that discussion. But one the most common things people said they admired about the Iron Lady was her 'strength of will', her insatiable drive to pass the policies she wanted passed, and her unwavering commitment to her ideology. Which I found... interesting.
When you are leading a country, but also when you are trying to achieve anything at all, you will inevitably come against people who have different ideas about what needs to be done. According to Thatcher's admirers, the best way to respond to these people is to stick to what you previously thought the best plan of action was, regardless of what they are saying. But to me, that makes very little sense.
All people are fallible, right? Including you. And the people you are arguing with hold the opinion they hold for a reason. They might have different life experience which you are ignorant of, or have considered the problem from an angle you didn't; or, it's possible, they might just be cleverer than you.
So why on earth would you not listen to them?
One of the Thatcher quotes which came up during the BBC News feature, in regard to a Commonwealth debate on whether or not to sanction apartheid South Africa, was: "if I am the minority of one in a group of fifty-four, then I feel very sorry for the fifty-three". That kind of attitude is just mind-boggling to me.
The kind of commitment to our own ideas at the expense of everyone else's which Thatcherites seem to be prescribing is just arrogance. Assuming that your way is the right way in the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary is not admirable, it is deeply destructive.
Empathy and compromise are the only real path to understanding. I think that a head of government who recognises that will be much better for a country than an unswayable dogmatist.
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