Margaret Thatcher has died. What is her legacy?

It's just been announced that Baroness Thatcher, former leader of the Conservative party and Conservative Prime Minister, has died following a stroke. She is undoubtedly one of the iconic political figures of the last century. Her reputation was global, and her legacy will be long-lasting. How will history view her?

The former grocer's daughter from Grantham will undoubtedly be listed alongside the likes of Winston Churchill and Tony Blair as someone who affected a nation. While Churchill's legacy is strongly positive, Mrs Thatcher's is far more mixed. She gave rise to a noun - "Thatcherism" as a result of her economic strategy, the effects of which are still felt to this day.

To many, she is seen as the saviour of modern Britain. To others, she was someone so focused on her ideology that the damage done by her policies ran deep.

Politics apart, from my point of view as a media commentator, she was one of the best interviewees ever. She always got her point across, regardless of the impertinent questions of her interlocutors. With her PR guru, Lord Bell, she planned many an ambush on policies she disagreed with, such as laying her handkerchief across the tails of model planes painted in the new British Airways livery.

Her funeral will be a huge public event - probably the largest political funeral since Winston Churchill's in the sixties. I shall bid her a fond farewell, not because I agreed with every one of her policies, but as an admirer of her fortitude, courage and powerful communication style.

We shall not see her like again for many a long year.

Picture Credit: By work provided by Chris Collins of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation (Margaret Thatcher Foundation) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons