Thatcher reaches 80 with selective guest list

BRITAIN:  At 80 some things can be forgiven, but not everything

BRITAIN:  At 80 some things can be forgiven, but not everything. Fifteen years after she was dramatically overthrown, Margaret Thatcher still inspires love and loathing - rarely indifference. She feels the same way about the rest of us.

So Geoffrey Howe, the disgruntled ally whose improbably eloquent resignation speech brought her down in 1990, was invited to last night's big birthday bash in Knightsbridge, along with Lady Howe, the vengeful wife who was jokingly said to have written it.

Though her rule had ended in tragedy, Lord Howe said yesterday her "astonishing achievements" had shaped the late 20th century "very largely for the better".

Lady Thatcher's designated successor, Sir John Major, who so disappointed her, was also sufficiently forgiven to be among the 650 guests expected at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Tony Blair, who cheerfully plundered her political wardrobe to dress New Labour, was also invited.

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So was Michael Howard, fourth Conservative leader in the War of Thatcher's Succession, which has raged ever since - to the party's great detriment.

Last night's cabinet reunion however found no place on the list for Michael Heseltine - no forgiveness for the would-be usurper, the traitor who left her cabinet in 1986 and represented all the corporatist, European capitalism she so despised.

Never mind that Lord Heseltine was the most successful capitalist who ever sat in her enterprise cabinet. Unlike Lord Howe, he was never a true believer. "The cabinet must unite to stop Michael Heseltine," she told them amid the tears (not just hers) of her last morning in the chair.

Kenneth Clarke, the Heath-and-Heseltine heretic whom sheer talent eventually forced her to promote, was not invited either. For a third time the Thatcherite rump at Westminster is poised to block the leadership hopes of the cabinet colleague who, on the night of November 21st, 1990, first had the guts to say to her face she must resign. Next morning she did.

So revenge - eaten cold - was on last night's menu along with the canapes and champagne.

David Cameron, an official at party HQ in 1990, was not invited (she doesn't know him), nor was Sir Malcolm Rifkind. But space was found for David Davis and Liam Fox, who is more eagerly Thatcherite than Thatcher and much less canny. Thus are Sicilian feuds handed down through the generations.

Through free markets and globalisation and the close alliance with the US, the Thatcher legacy endures, albeit with humane modification. Her severest critics have yet to provide a model which works better. But at least she "said what she meant and meant what she said", Tony Benn (not invited) conceded yesterday.

Like most things in history, Lady Thatcher's legacy depends on what happens next. Did she get it right in the long run or merely prevail in the short term? In her prime, Mrs Thatcher was mobbed by vast crowds abroad to whom she was a symbol of freedom.

What undermines her reputation at home is the quality her friend Ronald Reagan had, Churchill and Elizabeth I too, but she did not: that human touch in her public personality, humour, imaginative sympathy for those unlike herself, generosity towards opponents. She chose to be the warrior.