Another Health Scare for Margaret Thatcher

It's not surprising that the 82-year-old "Iron Lady" continues to have spells -- this, a sudden feeling a faintness while dining at the House of Lords -- that land her in the hospital for observation. (Though few would don the red dress and pearls to leave the hospital and greet the media, as Lady Thatcher did on March 8, 2008, as pictured.) The former prime minister who, along with Ronald Reagan, helped bring down the Iron Curtain has not been in the best of health for years, suffering her first stroke in 2002 and several smaller ones after that. In 2004, although she made the trip to Simi Valley for Reagan's funeral, she delivered her eulogy via prerecorded video. Her husband, Dennis, passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2003.

Thatcher is a tough lady, and has proven adept at defying each health scare. But the health of the Conservative Party that carries her legacy is a different matter. A couple of years ago, a former Thatcher aide told me that she doesn't care for David Cameron, then hushed over the statement like he was revealing state secrets or something. Cameron's platform resembles little of Thatcher's small-government mantra, and the Conservatives' torch symbol has been replaced with an abstract tree-thingy. When Tory MP Quentin Davies jumped ship to join Labour last summer, he wrote Cameron a scathing letter explaining his decision:

"Under your leadership the Conservative Party appears to me to have ceased collectively to believe in anything, or to stand for anything. It has no bedrock. It exists on shifting sands. A sense of mission has been replaced by a PR agenda.

Although you have many positive qualities you have three, superficiality, unreliability and an apparent lack of any clear convictions, which in my view ought to exclude you from the position of national leadership to which you aspire and which it is the presumed purpose of the Conservative Party to achieve.

Believing that as I do, I clearly cannot honestly remain in the party. I do not intend to leave public life."

Cameron's response: "You have made your choice and the British people will make theirs."

Thatcher took the occasion of a bust unveiled in her honor at Conservative Party headquarters last month to hint at Cameron's changes:

“Unveiling this bust, which will stand opposite that of Sir Winston Churchill, is a very special honour. For Churchill reminds us of the enduring values of our Party. The Conservative Party has always been at its best, and at its most successful, when it has held firm to its beliefs. Today, as we face the challenges of the future, let us remain steadfast and sure. Let us set a clear course for our country. And, as Churchill taught us, let us never falter in proclaiming what we know to be right.

So my message to you tonight is to have faith in all that we stand for and to go forward with confidence."

For his part, Cameron reminisced on the first time he met Thatcher, and said she was "looking so well."