I went to see 'The Iron Lady' the other day and Meryl Streep did an amazing job playing Margaret Thatcher. The film really only gave a brief summary of her life, but it did cover all of the major events of her time as Prime Minister of Britain. I never realised that her popularity waxed and waned so much over her terms as Prime Minister. I suppose I should not be surprised that there were times that she was extremely popular, because she did manage to stay in office for over 11 years. What I had never realised until today was that she was challenged for leadership towards the end of her final term and that she resigned rather than face the challenge. I had always assumed that she must have been voted out due to the public losing faith in her because of her unpopular decisions, I didn't realise that her party had also lost faith in her.
I had always had the opinion that she was somebody who lead Britain and made decisions based on what she believed was right for the country, not on what was popular at the time. The film reinforced this view of her to me but it also portrayed that her party did not always agree with her opinions and many times she did not have their full support, which I guess is proved by the fact that towards the end, they tried to remove her as leader. The movie really got me to thinking about politics and how our systems of government work. We incentivise politicians to do the popular thing instead of the right thing, because we will reward them with reelection if they do the popular thing, however sometimes the unpopular thing is right and for a politician to decide to embark on this course may cost them reelection. I wonder how often we actually miss opportunities to improve our country because the thing that is right, is not done because it is not popular?
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