So what politician from the other side do you secretly like?

[Hassled]

I'm not talking policies necessarily - just who do you secretly like despite them being the spawn of Satan?

Me - Labour supporter/member, and I have a real soft spot for Ken Clarke. He seems like an affable sort of chap who I'd enjoy a meal with. Ditto William Hague - I've always been fond of young William.

Claig, longfingernails etc - who would you happily spend an evening with from the Labour party?

Also, unemployment went up under Jim Callaghan, but you don't find people calling him evil. "Not very good, but probably did the best job he could in trying circumstances" is what you usually hear about him.

I think I'd better take back what I said about David Cameron. He's just that bit too slimy.

So what is it about Thatcher that evokes such strongly negative sentiment? Because she really does.

Lots of things, I expect: personality, forcefulness, her way of saying everything as if she knew she was exactly right, that hectoring tone which a lot of people just found got their backs up... Reminded them too much of their mothers, probably :)

Plus the decade being shaped by key conflicts like the miner's strike and the Poll Tax, on which it was difficult to be ambivalent and so which polarised opinion.

MINERS', I do apologise. There was more than one miner on strike

My FIL stalwart Labour, so opposed to nearly all she stood for, but he is also a bigoted dinosaur man of his generation, and did say they had a problem with a woman prime-minister telling them what to do. But there were plenty who adored her, must have done as they kept voting her in, (my father for one - started a small business in that time, worked v hard & felt his hard work was rewarded).

Have posted this before, but worryingly where the ILs and dh's extended family live there are a lot of disgruntled Labour supporters who, when turning away from the Left, don't go to the Liberals but to the far right and the BNP. The BNP came a narrow 2nd in a swathe of local council elections there (Tory and LD vote remained at a steady low, but the Labour vote nosedived).

sweetandtender - re Clegg - definitely would. Met him a few years ago - he is v cute in RL