The greatest victory of Margaret was Tony

Stalin or Joan of Arc Trenching of Scotland, Wales and puritanical England or, on the contrary, sauveuse of "sick man of Europe" Margaret Thatcher, now eighty-three years old and suffering from Alzheimer's disease, came to power on May 4, 1979. Thirty years already. On this occasion, our British neighbours are engaged in a painful open heart introspection on his legacy. The iron lady has had beau leaving 10 Downing Street there are about nineteen years, in November 1990, the diagnosis remains passionately shared.

The coincidence of this anniversary with the worst recession Britain has known since the war causes even a curious political choreography. On the left, the labour party relay to blame of the torments of the British economy on Margaret Thatcher and his philosophy of laissez-faire. Right, the Conservative leader David Cameron Announces "age of austerity", as if a blonde wig and a handbag to push him. There is nothing more normal Perhaps, but before, it was the opposite.

The greatest victory of Margaret, was Tony. In 1994, the young Blair found the fifteen years of ineligibility of the Labour parade, Visual Socialist program of social justice for a good splash of "free market". Since his election in 1997, the labour party has followed, or even accelerated, most of the channels of liberalization initiated by Margaret Thatcher. Easy, therefore, to denounce the Big Bang of 1986 and the deregulation of the City as the source of British headaches. A little as if Nicolas Sarkozy going to blow the minds of François Mitterrand and Pierre Bérégovoy.

The current crisis marks not so much the failure of a capitalist ideology that it is known as Thatcherism, or reaganisme as the bankruptcy of its implementation, in a context of monetary expansion. And the fault is shared. The reform of banking supervision concocted by Gordon Brown has been a disaster. And if the home ownership was one of the pillars of the Thatcherite enrichment, the British debt would become stratospheric under the benevolent guardianship of the Chancellor of iron.

Private in extremis of its 30 glorieuses, Britain going to throw the baby with the dirty bath water No, because the end of Thatcherism appears to already announce its revival. Clearly, if New Labour has been stored in the cloakroom, neo-conservatives questioned their positioning. Until then, the obsession with David Cameron, head of the torys for four years, was to overcome the cumbersome gaff statue of the Commendatore. By positioning itself as the heir to Blair, remained faithful in freshwater to the consensus established by Margaret Thatcher, while hoping to escape the label of "party of the ugly". With calamitous unveiled last month British financial prospects, the patrician took expensive language of austerity in the grocer's daughter.

And, of course, the parallel is tempting. If polls are correct, David Cameron will inherit in spring 2010 a dramatic situation, as Margaret in 1979, elected three years after James Callaghan has begged a humiliating IMF assistance. Like her, the future Prime Minister écopera a mountain of debt, at 75 of GDP in 2012-2013. But the similarities stop there. At the end of the 1970s, inflation on the road to the 20 was the enemy to bring down (with the trade unions). And privatization and the petroleum manna was to finance the debt and the decline in income taxes. Any Conservative Government in 2010 will not have the same flexibility.

Cut spending or raise taxes The cleavage between the right and left British Lord empty of meaning, when action must be taken on the two. By programming an increase in taxes for the rich the next year, Gordon Brown has tended a coarse trap his opponent. If he keeps the rate of 50, it alienates the City and entrepreneurs; If he denounces it is catalogued as the Party of the rich cigar.

For the moment, David Cameron doesn't decide and let wear by the disenchantment of the electorate after twelve years of administration Labour. But there is no doubt that the time has come, the torys willing to sell their soul to the devil, that he is named Tony or Margaret, to return to power. Indeed, more that of an unlikely potion miracle, Great Britain, whose international image is tarnished, will especially need a great leader, credible and determined. It is not at first sight. Apart, perhaps, Mrs Thatcher.