Thatcher Speaks

By all means let us give the whole quotation which is supposed to represent the heartless self centeredness of the Conservative party.

They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours." –Margaret Thatcher in an interview in Women's Own in 1987

That attitude does not represent classic conservative thought as even a cursory reading of Edmund Burke and F.H. Bradley will demonstrate. It is perhaps a direct descendent of the libertarian individualist anarchism of William Godwin and the sacred tenet of Private Judgement.

What would she do with Brexit? Out, Out, Out as she said in relation to Northern Ireland dismissing the woolly nostrums of Garret Fitzgerald. Brexit might be just the thing to break the U.K. union as the impossibility of not having a land border in Ireland became evident. The irony of history is a cliché that is sometimes unavoidable.