MAGGIE HAUNTS BURNHAM'S BACKWARDNESS

One pictures Mr Andy Burnham, freshly installed or about to be installed in the highest office, furrowing his brow in that manner of a man who has just discovered the source of all our woes and is determined not to let mere chronology get in the way. Margaret Thatcher resigned in 1990, it is now 2026. Yet here we are, being solemnly informed that the ghost of the grocer’s daughter from Grantham still haunts the council estates and former pit villages, rattling her neoliberal chains and preventing Britain from achieving its true socialist destiny. One almost admires the stamina of the grudge. Most political enmities fade after a decade or two; this one has been lovingly pickled for thirty-six years, like some particularly sour Labour heirloom.

Mr Burnham’s project, we are told, is to take Britain 'back' – a deliciously vague direction that always sounds progressive when uttered by those who have run out of forward ideas. Back, presumably, to the golden age before the woman he so dislikes dared suggest that the state was not an infinitely patient nanny and that industries might occasionally have to compete or perish. The 1970s, that decade of warm beer, cold houses, and even colder economic reality, exerts a curious magnetism on a certain stripe of Labour romantic. One is reminded of those ageing rock stars who insist their best work was done before the pesky business of commercial success interfered. 'The Winter of Discontent', when the dead went unburied and the rubbish piled up like a municipal performance art piece, is recast in the Burnham mind as a sort of egalitarian idyll rudely interrupted by efficiency.

Let us be clear about what Thatcher actually did, before the revisionists turn her into a cartoon vampire. Britain in 1979 was the sick man of Europe, a nation where the unions could bring down governments, where the top tax rate reached a confiscatory 98 per cent, and where nationalised industries operated with all the dynamism of a Soviet tractor factory. The lady was not for turning, as she famously said, and the country turned with her. She curbed the overweening power of the trade unions, not out of sadistic glee but because the alternative was national paralysis. She privatised clapped-out state monopolies, injecting competition and, more importantly, capital into creaking enterprises. She cut taxes, broadened ownership through council house sales, and helped transform a nation of renters and strikers into one where aspiration was not treated as a bourgeois vice. By the time she left office, Britain had become the most vibrant large economy in the European Community – a phrase that now sounds quaint, like referring to Concorde as modern transport.

These were not abstract ideological victories. Millions of ordinary families gained assets and agency. North Sea oil revenues were not merely squandered on benefits; they coincided with a structural shift away from the delusion that government could indefinitely prop up uncompetitive industries. Inflation was tamed. Enterprise was no longer viewed as something slightly distasteful that happened in the Home Counties. One need not admire every aspect of the Thatcher era – the social dislocations in certain regions were real and painful – to recognise that the medicine, however bitter, arrested a terminal decline. To blame the lingering problems of 2026 on a prime minister who has been out of power for more than a generation is rather like a middle-aged man attributing his expanding waistline to the dietary choices of his long-deceased grandmother.

Yet Mr Burnham appears determined to prescribe the old remedies: more public ownership, a grand return to council house building on the post-war scale, regional 'power shifts' that usually mean shifting blame northward while keeping the Treasury levers firmly in Whitehall, and a general suspicion of markets that have the cheek to demand results. It is the politics of nostalgia dressed up as compassion. One wonders whether he has noticed that the 1970s model – heavy state intervention, protected industries, muscular unionism – produced not equality but shared misery, with the poorest suffering most from shortages, blackouts, and economic stagnation. The post-Thatcher settlement, for all its imperfections, delivered growth, jobs, and rising living standards that benefited far more people than any Labour government managed before, or since.

The sardonic comedy here lies in the timing. Britain in 2026 already labours under high public debt, feeble growth, strained public services, and the familiar temptation to solve problems by spending other people’s money. Burnham’s solution is to accelerate down the very path that contributed to these difficulties: more borrowing, more regulation, more faith in the benevolence of the state. It is as if, having watched a patient recover from a serious illness thanks to rigorous treatment, the new doctor declares the cure itself was the disease and proposes a return to leeches and bloodletting. The markets, that amoral Greek chorus, will not be amused. Bond yields have a way of expressing disapproval more eloquently than any opposition speech.

One should not underestimate the seductive power of the anti-Thatcher sermon in certain constituencies. It offers a simple morality tale: virtuous workers betrayed by a heartless Iron Lady and her neoliberal spawn. It absolves subsequent Labour and Conservative administrations of their own contributions to fiscal incontinence, regulatory bloat, and energy policy follies. It flatters the audience that their struggles are someone else’s fault, preferably a dead Conservative woman. Yet premierships are not sustained by folk memory or conference hall cheers. They are tested by delivery – by whether the lights stay on, the economy grows, and people feel their children might have better prospects than they did. Reversing the Thatcherite emphasis on incentives, competition, and limited government is not bold leadership; it is a form of historical cosplay with real-world costs.

The warning to Mr Burnham is therefore blunt, if delivered in the driest of tones. Your fantasy of 1970s restoration will prove terminally fatal to your premiership before it has even begun, because Britain has already tried it and did not enjoy the experience. Voters may flirt with nostalgia at by-elections, but they tend to punish governments that deliver 1970s outcomes in the 21st century: stagnant wages, creaking infrastructure, and that special sense of national decline once memorably described as 'the British disease.' Thatcher’s lesson was that economic progress requires uncomfortable choices – letting failing enterprises fail, encouraging work over dependency, and recognising that wealth must be created before it can be distributed. Ignore it at your peril. The electorate, unlike certain Labour orators, has a long memory but a short tolerance for recycled failure.

In the end, one suspects history will be less kind to the Burnham project than his supporters hope. Thirty-six years after Thatcher’s resignation, Britain’s problems – low productivity, demographic pressures, geopolitical uncertainty – demand fresh thinking, not a reheated 1970s menu. To govern is to choose. Mr Burnham has chosen the past. The future, one fears, will return the compliment by choosing someone else.

A SMALL WOMAN, A LOUD VOICE: ANN WIDDECOMBE'S UNCHOSEN EXIT

The death of Ann Widdecombe was first reported as the quiet passing of a formidable octogenarian. Within hours, the narrative shifted. The 78-year-old former Conservative minister and Reform UK spokeswoman was found dead at her isolated home in Haytor on Dartmoor, Devon, on 9 July 2026. She had sustained serious injuries. Devon and Cornwall Police launched a murder investigation. A young man in his late twenties was arrested on suspicion of murder; authorities have stressed that terrorism and political motivation appear unlikely, though they remain open-minded about the precise circumstances. What began as an obituary for a combative political survivor became something darker: a meditation on a life lived loudly, terminated in apparent solitude and violence. 

Widdecombe was never one for understatement. Born in 1947, she entered Parliament as the MP for Maidstone in 1987 and quickly established herself as the Conservative Party’s moral battering ram. Ministers came and went with the political tides; Widdecombe stood firm on issues ranging from abortion to penal policy. As Shadow Home Secretary and a prisons minister, she championed tough measures that earned her both admiration and caricature. Her voice—distinctive, authoritative, and occasionally reminiscent of a headmistress addressing particularly dim pupils—cut through the Commons like a scalpel. She converted to Catholicism with characteristic decisiveness, viewing faith not as a private comfort but as a public framework for right conduct.

Her later career with the Brexit Party and Reform UK suited her temperament perfectly. Euroscepticism was no passing fad for Widdecombe; it was a logical extension of her belief in sovereignty and accountability. She brought to these newer vehicles the same unapologetic forthrightness that had defined her Tory years. Television audiences saw another side during Strictly Come Dancing, where her dancing was less choreography than an act of dignified defiance against rhythm itself. The public warmed, in its fickle way, to this pocket-sized force of nature.

The manner of her death has inevitably invited speculation. She lived alone in a rural setting, a fact that may have made her vulnerable. Initial reports mentioned a prior fall while attempting to rescue a mouse from her cat—an anecdote perfectly in character, blending compassion with the faintly absurd. Yet the discovery of serious injuries transformed the story from natural causes or accident to homicide. Police have arrested, released and re-arrested a suspect, early indications pointed away from organised political violence, possible explanations remain broad. A burglary that escalated horrifically? A personal dispute with a local individual unknown to the wider public? A random encounter with someone in mental distress or under the influence? Or something more calculated, rooted in a long-simmering grudge against her very public persona?

In an era of heightened political tension, any attack on a figure like Widdecombe inevitably raises questions about societal fracture. Britain has seen the murders of MPs Jo Cox and David Amess in recent memory; each prompted soul-searching about safety, rhetoric, and the protection of democratic voices. Widdecombe’s case, while apparently non-political according to current police statements, still lands heavily. She was a woman who never softened her views to suit prevailing opinion. In a culture increasingly allergic to robust disagreement, such steadfastness can attract not only debate but, in disturbed minds, darker impulses. We cannot rule out the possibility that her very visibility—her refusal to retreat into bland consensus—played some indirect role, even if the immediate trigger was mundane or opportunistic. 

What endures is her legacy. Widdecombe represented a strain of British conservatism that prized conviction over calculation. In an age of focus groups and performative empathy, she was refreshingly, sometimes abrasively, authentic. Supporters praised her integrity; critics found her views on social issues inflexible or outdated. Both assessments contain truth. She was a product of her times who refused to be embarrassed by them. Her passing, especially under these grim circumstances, leaves British public life thinner. The Commons has no shortage of smooth operators; it has fewer unyielding characters willing to plant their flag and defend it come what may.

The circumstances of her death—violent, unexpected, under investigation—add a layer of tragedy to an already remarkable story. Ann Widdecombe did not go gently. Even in death, her exit forces reflection on vulnerability, principle, and the thin line separating robust debate from something far uglier. As police continue their work, the nation mourns not only a politician but a woman who lived according to her lights with rare consistency. The Almighty, one suspects, will find her as forthright in the next world as she was in this one. The rest of us are left pondering how a life defined by moral clarity could end in such opaque brutality.

SAM NEILL (1947 - 2026): AN OBITUARY

Sam Neill, that wry New Zealander with the face of a mildly disappointed bloodhound and the voice of a man who had seen too many dinosaurs to be surprised by anything, has finally called 'cut' on his time in this world at the age of 78. He died as he lived: with quiet dignity, a glass of something decent in hand, and probably wondering why the rest of us made such a fuss about it all. 

Born Omagh, Northern Ireland, in 1947, he was whisked to Christchurch, New Zealand, as a boy, where the landscape taught him early that nature was both magnificent and faintly ridiculous. He studied English literature, dabbled in theatre, and eventually drifted into acting with the air of a man who had wandered into the wrong profession but decided to stay for the sandwiches. Success came steadily rather than in vulgar bursts: "My Brilliant Career", "The Piano", and "The Hunt for Red October" bought him to prominence. Yet it was as Dr Alan Grant in "Jurassic Park" that he achieved immortality, running from CGI lizards while maintaining the expression of a palaeontologist who had just remembered he left the oven on. 

Neill always seemed slightly amused by Hollywood’s excesses, as if the entire industry were a slightly overblown school play. In 1986 he even screen-tested for James Bond—a spectacle one suspects he undertook mostly to see if he could keep a straight face. He looked the part, delivered the lines with that dry Kiwi drawl, and then sensibly declined to pursue it. “You really don’t want to be the Bond no one likes,” he later observed with characteristic good sense. One pictures him in the tuxedo, raising a sceptical eyebrow at an exploding helicopter and thinking: "Must I really?" 

Off-screen, Neill was no mere thespian tourist. He founded Two Paddocks, his organic winery in Central Otago, and tended it with the devotion others reserve for religion or football. He planted natives, welcomed back tui and bellbirds, fought dubious mining proposals, and generally behaved like a man who understood that the planet was not, in fact, his personal green room. 

While lesser celebrities preached environmentalism from private jets, Neill got his hands dirty in the schist soils of his beloved South Island, proving that one could be both movie star and responsible steward of the land. It was, in its quiet way, rather heroic. He leaves behind a body of work remarkable for its range and restraint, a clutch of excellent Pinot Noirs, and the sort of gentle satirical intelligence that made him irresistible company. In an age of shouting, Sam Neill whispered truths with a raised eyebrow and a half-smile. The world is a little less civilised without him.