Richard Bridge: it is evident from your post that you know a lot about malice. Nevertheless, I believe you to be mistaken.

In my experience (and it's a generalisation to which there are many honourable exceptions), those of the left suffer from an inability to attribute honest motives to those who may disagree with them. It's as though their point of view is somehow absolute and self-evident so that there can be no possibility of dissent; ergo, dissent must be motivated by malice. (As an aside, I point out that when such people get into power dissenters end up in gulags, as, entirely consistently, befits the malicious.) Again in my experience, this phenomenon is often accompanied by a complete failure of sense of humour.

In my opinion (and my point of view is contrary to yours), Mrs Thatcher's motives were not malicious. Unlike the current inhabitant of No 10, she was prepared to make, not just talk about, hard choices, and she put popularity low down on the priority list. One of the major criteria she used in making these choices was "What's good for Britain?". Certainly, people suffered as a result of her choices, but people (different people) would have suffered had she made different choices or none. Again, this is a generalisation, and it's likely that you can find exceptions.

If you admit that she often acted honestly according to her lights, you can still disagree with what she did, but at least you won't appear quite so dehumanising about her.