Ronald Reagan would be giving the golf clap to UKIP as well.
It’s called liberty, baby!
NOTE: It very well might be that Maggie would have jumped ship to UKIP, in light of the Tories full throttle swallowing of the EU cult of neo-statism/artistocracy.
Margaret Thatcher would be ‘secretly cheering on Farage’s Ukip’, claims former Tory minister Jonathan Aitken
- Aitken, who dated Carol Thatcher for three years, claims ‘leanings’ to Ukip
- Suggests ex-PM would have ‘sneaking sympathy’ for Farage
By MATT CHORLEY, MAILONLINE POLITICAL EDITOR
PUBLISHED: 10:38 GMT, 24 March 2014 | UPDATED: 12:27 GMT, 24 March 2014
Margaret Thatcher would have secretly ‘cheered on’ Ukip leader Nigel Farage for speaking out on immigration and Europe, ex-Tory Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken has claimed.
As the Conservatives brace themselves to be beaten by Ukip in May’s European elections, Mr Aitken said Baroness Thatcher would have had ‘not just a sneaking sympathy but a lot of leanings towards Nigel Farage’.
The remarks risk reigniting the row over the former Prime Minister’s views almost a year after her death.
Margaret Thatcher would have ‘a lot of leanings’ towards Ukip leader Nigel Farage, according to Jonathan Aitken
Mr Aitken, a former MP who went out with Baroness Thatcher’s daughter Carol for three years, said many of her political views were closer to Mr Farage than the Tory leadership.
Speaking at the Oxford Literary Festival, he said: ‘I think secretly she would have cheered him on. I think he voices a lot of her prejudices.
‘She would never have said I vote for Ukip, I vote for Farage. But a lot of the views Nigel Farage expresses … on immigration, on the idea [that] Britain can manage as a worldleading nation without relying on the European Union, and above all she was really fed up [with] centralism and liberalism and Brussels domination,’ the Telegraph reported.
‘I think she would have had not just a sneaking sympathy but a lot of leanings towards Nigel Farage, without ever quite coming out for Ukip.’
Mr Aitken was a Tory MP from 1974-97, serving in John Major’s Cabinet for a year as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He was jailed for perjury in 1999.
He made the remarks while promoting his book, Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality, which he says covers the period when ‘she goes off the rails’ after her resignation.
