ABSTRACT
Enough time has passed since the fall to make at least a preliminary evaluation both of Thatcher and of the legacy of Thatcherism. This separation is inevitably crude, but it may help to make two distinctions: between Thatcher and Thatcherism on the one hand, and between short-term, political effects and longer term economic and cultural ones on the other. Thatcher proved more successful than Thatcherism. Her short-term political successes stand in stark, almost embarrassing, contrast to the damaging and divisive failure which Thatcherism now appears to have been.
