To continue Conor's discussion of Portillo's show...
IMHO, this was a very poor piece of television.
In a documentary about Thatcher's legacy, I point out that there was no mention AT ALL of the following:
- The Falklands
- Sale of Council Housing
- The Unions / Miners (beyond a very brief reference to the winter of discontent)
- Privatisation
- The Cold War
- UK/US Thatcher/Reagan relations
Whatever you might think of any or all of those things, I think you would agree that they were central aspects of the Thatcher years and are amongst the main factors that generate her legacy.
Instead, the show spent over half an hour on the Poll Tax, and about 40 minutes on her influence or otherwise after she'd left office.
Not coincidentally, these are times and events during which Michael Portillo had himself risen to prominence. Those factors in which he personally had involvement received coverage. Those in which he did not, did not. So there was a second theme to the production: how great Michael Portillo is and how foolish the Party was not to have chosen him as leader.
I am afraid that Portillo is a useful servant of our media class, who in the interests of "balance" get to use him as a token Tory. For them, balance = Diane "I love Mao" Abbott, i.e. hard left, and Portillo, i.e. soft left.
Further, he is the ideal tool when one wants to make a "documentary" that gives a highly unbalanced view of Britain's greatest peacetime Prime Minister, in which precisely none of her achievements are discussed in any way, but rather much sniping is done by erstwhile colleagues under the aegis of a presenter whose credentials are supposedly unimpeachable as he's a famous Tory; or rather, in reality, a famous ex-Tory whose prime interest is self-aggrandisement. That he harms the Party that gave him all he has in public life in the process seems to be neither here nor there to him.
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