Will The Iron Lady's portrayal of Thatcher encourage a new generation to enter politics? – Telegraph Blogs

Thursday 20 June 2013 | Blog Feed | All feeds

Guy Stagg



The Iron Lady

The Iron Lady suggests that you don't have to be a crook to become a politician (Picture: Pathe)

The Iron Lady is that rarest thing: a work of art that shows politics in a positive light. The film stays neutral when it comes to Margaret Thatcher’s policies, and even her personality. But it does make the case that becoming a politician is a worthwhile, even admirable, thing to do.

In this country, fictional portrayals of politicians are not flattering: the usual attitude is either cynicism or contempt. Films, plays and novels should treat politicians with suspicion, but they would be thin works of art if that was all that they did.

The Iron Lady asks questions about the effect of power on family and identity, but it never doubts that Margaret Thatcher went into politics for the right reasons. The film endorses her belief that "one must matter", and that politics is the way to realise such an ambition.

Charles Moore is right that whatever their instinctive political response to Thatcher, most young people are extremely interested in the first female prime minister in the Western world. I saw the film on a Saturday night, and the cinema was full of people in their twenties. But hopefully The Iron Lady will do more than further their interest in Thatcher – hopefully it will further their interest in politics as well.

Young people are put off politics by its lack of integrity. You have to compromise your personality to get to the top, and once you are there you have to compromise your principles to get anything done. But The Iron Lady argues that the opposite was true.

New Labour was probably no worse for the reputation of politicians than any other administration. But that government’s cultural legacy was summed up by the acid cynicism of Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer and the brutal satire of The Thick of It. Neither of them were a glowing endorsement of politicians’ characters.

In the end, this is bad for democracy. Going into politics should be a sacrifice, but if it means that people treat you with nothing but suspicion, then the only politicians you will get are the insanely noble and the insanely ambitious.

Some people go into politics for the right reasons and the arts have a duty to explore that fact. If politicians are simply cut-out villains it is not just bad for politics, it bad for art as well. If we had more films like The Iron Lady, then maybe we would have more politicians like Thatcher.

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