LONDON - The finger wagged, the handbag twitched, the eyes glowered. When Baroness Thatcher swept into Bournemouth yesterday, it was truly as if she had never been away.
Offering a vivid flashback of her reign as Prime Minister, the Tories' most famous pensioner arrived at the conference to accuse Tony Blair of perpetrating an "outright fraud" on the country's greying population.
Having indicated early support for Blair, only to see him turn out to be a closet social democrat, Lady Thatcher may well have been referring to her own experience at the hands of the Labour leader.
It quickly became clear, however, that she was speaking up for all the other little old ladies who felt conned by the Prime Minister's record since he came to office.
"This Government has put a means test on old age pensions, so that thousands and thousands of people who paid contributions all their lives are not getting their pension," she said, the contempt in her voice barely concealed.
"That to me is outright fraud. That which you have contributed, you should get when you retire, not have it taken away - that is what Labour is like."
Barbara Castle, eat your heart out.
In what has become something of an annual tradition, she seized her chance to speak out as Tory leader William Hague and his wife Ffion formally welcomed her and husband Denis to the conference.
Clearly wary of Two Jags John Prescott's embarrassing little car journey at Labour's Bournemouth junket last year, Hague opted to walk the windswept 300 yards from the Highcliff Hotel to the conference centre.
The noble Baroness had no such qualms as she was chauffeured down the hill in her Jaguar before being greeted by a slightly nervous-looking leader of the Opposition.
Hague posed dutifully for the cameras and was ready to glide noiselessly into the conference centre without taking questions from reporters. After last year's virtual takeover of the conference with her speech on General Pinochet, her visit was meant to be decidedly low key.
Unfortunately for the Central Office fixers, Thatcher failed to stick to the script and simply couldn't resist the lure of the microphones and the chance to handbag Blair on the pensions issue.
Hague's smile froze on his face as she lurched forward to address the media, that finger wagging furiously. "For years, as a young MP, I was a junior minister for pensions and national insurance," she said. "The money people paid into their pensions they got out in their pensions in their old age. Not now."
Then, after a few steps towards the entrance, she couldn't resist another question, this time on tax.
"We cut taxes. When I took over as Prime Minister, the top rate of tax was 98 per cent on savings and 83 per cent on earnings. We got that down to 40 per cent. That's Conservatism."
Before she could hold forth on any other issues, Lady Thatcher was ushered gently inside.
However, there was no keeping her down and once in the hall she was given a lengthy standing ovation as she walked on to the platform.
Denied the chance to speak, she simply nodded and bowed slowly like a geisha until the acclaim died down.
- INDEPENDENT
Finger-wagging Thatcher bags Tory limelight
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