If Thatcher was so "evil," how'd she get in?

[dmallind]

12. Some thoughts - I lived through almost all her tenure

Firstly, some answerers are oversimplifying. While the party picks their leader and the leader becomes PM when their party has a majority, this doesn't mean that she was elected in secret or unknown to the electorate. She was elected - three times - as the known leader of the Conservative party with 100% certainty that she would be PM if the party won enough seats.

Her opposition does bear some blame true. UK politics is not quite as image-drenched as US analogs, but Foot - a wild-haired dishevelled slob spouting 30s-era socialism - was an easy opponent to ridicule, and with some merit. Clearly the idea that all was well with the competitiveness and quality of British Leyland and the cost-effectiveness of paying more in labor alone to extract coal than it was worth, and that the country wanted more of the same, was a poor gameplan. Unemployment was above 11% both times she was REelected too and still the electorate had less faith in Labour responses than hers. Kinnock was an ineffectual type who couldn't shake the old style socialism still rampant in Labour at the time. People on DU tend to be fond of socialism, but 1970s UK is as close to it as I ever want to come. I've actually lived in a broadly nationalized heavily socialized society. In reality it is a retardant economic system - a drag on progress and innovation and, often, common sense.

Geography plays a role though. While gerrymandering per se is far less of an issue in th UK than here, regional political differences are if anything MORE pronounced. TX is flirting with purpleness, SC may be on the horizon, but Jeffrey Dahmer would win a Labour seat in much of the industrial Northeast of England running against Jesus as a Tory. Likewise, many areas in the well to do Home Counties will never go Labour. The South, obviously as a generalization with exceptions, is a Tory stronghold, and that's where most of the people are.

Lets be honest too, racism helped. Thatcher wasn't openly racist in a Duke or even Thurmond mold, but her much tougher, by UK standards, approach to immigration and integration appealed more to those who were. There has been a sizeable racist contingent in UK politics for decades, from the National Front to the BNP to the EDL or whatever they are calling themselves now. Integration is often less advanced even than in the US, with heavily Asian, and to a much lesser extent Afro-Carribean areas forming almost entirely differentiated enclaves. For reasons both good but mostly racist, the resentment of the white majority was palpable throughout her tenure. "Paki-Bashing" was an open and even competitive "sport" in my youth amongst the racist set, and this attitude was nowhere near as frowned upon as it is today. What causes careers to end here and now made them there and then, with comedians like Manning and his more gentle versions like Davidson given prime time TV slots to tell racist jokes to most of the country. Which party do you think those influenced by that type of slime supported? The NF had the extremists, but the much more populous "simple" racists went Tory.

The era only ended, as stated above, when Labour finally shook off the Tony Benn style of socialism and formed a credible opposition. Blair surely is a warmongering toady, but he did at least make it possible to change the rate and some of the direction of Thatcherism in the UK. Just as in the US, the "Third Way" can win, while socialism cannot. Labour, to their credit, learned that way too late in Thatcher's career to stop her.