Margaret Thatcher died today. And amongst the reaction, I see things like this: a street party in Brixton to celebrate; people taking absolute joy that “the witch is dead”, to quote one person.

(I’m leaving people quoted anonymous today, as I’m mostly taking the quotes from updates that are not necessarily public).

And I don’t get it.

Oh, I understand the animosity people here have towards her. And I understand the bit of a smile that can be generated when something bad befalls such a person — as a complete stranger and public figure who had long ago moved out of the public eye, the concept of Thatcher-as-person does not really seem to resonate with people my age or younger. You may remember her as Prime Minister if you were my age, but you would not have even been a teenager at the time.

Tony Blair even described having seen her on the newsstands as he was “growing up”, and he is nearing 60.

For those younger than me, it is difficult to believe that they have any real memory of Thatcher-the-Prime Minister, at all.

And so Thatcher today is largely a concept. Today’s Conservative Party blueprint. Privatisation. Union busting. Cutting benefits. And cognitively, I think Thatcher’s death is being processed as a death-of-the-concept.

But it’s not. Margaret Thatcher was a person. And today there was a death-of-the-person. And anybody who is cheering her death should take a sober second look at what they are cheering about. Because Conservatives? They think like this:

She was simply a towering colossus of British politics and, to Tories like myself, little short of godlike.

And this:

For my own part, there is no doubt in my mind that she literally SAVED THIS COUNTRY.

The person who died today looked like this:

She no longer participated in politics — the little dabbling she did had to stop due to health reasons. She had dementia. She was not making policy, advising on policy, making bold statements in the press, or doing anything that impacted other people’s lives anymore.

And the Thatcher years? They’re over twenty years behind us, and had been fading in the rearview mirror. David Cameron, the current Prime Minister, spent years trying to put distance between the Conservative Party he leads and the Conservative Party of Margaret Thatcher.

Today, the Thatcher that people are remembering looks like this:

And that Margaret Thatcher was not quietly succumbing to dementia in her old age. That Margaret Thatcher is the public figure; the conceptual Thatcher. The one that who is believed to have “literally SAVED THIS COUNTRY.”

As politicians of all stripes gather to say nice things about the woman that they despised in the late 1980s in the coming days, the government will be — as they always are — drafting policies, implementing policies, and authoring bills to be put before parliament.

And this government — this Conservative government, led by a man who was not yet a teenager when Thatcher took over the Conservative party, made of people who either participated in the Thatcher years, or decided to join the party based upon them — this government is being reminded of its only “glory days” in living memory: four consecutive election victories, and international influence.

So please, all you left-wingers out there taking joy in Thatcher’s death, imagine what your Conservative fellows are thinking. Imagine their rose-tinted memories, aided by comments like these from their enemies.

And remember that they’re the ones making the laws right now.

Edited to add that I don’t mean this in a don’t-speak-ill-of-the-dead sort of way.

Basically, stick to bashing her politics. Trash the street parties. You (if you’re a politically active person on the left) should be seeing this as a time for action, not celebration.

You might think, from Tuesday’s little outburst about David Cameron, that there is no way that I would vote for a Conservative in the upcoming election.

While the Conservatives certainly cannot count on my vote, you would be wrong — at this moment, I am still a very undecided voter.

It is simple, you see, to find reasons not to vote for a particular individual or party — it is easy to find something that you disagree with and focus on it. This tendency is what drives negative election campaigns and makes them successful. The truth is that no party involved in the election will have my support in everything they do.

There are two main principles on which I vote.

First, there is an order of importance when it comes to who you vote for — an order that most have backwards.

The individual comes first: you vote for your Member of Parliament. This person can vote against party lines, or even change party. My voice as a citizen will largely be determined by how that individual will vote, what they will speak up about, and how loud their voice will carry.

The party is a secondary consideration. While the votes are made by individuals, the individual’s voting pattern will likely match the party line about 90% of the time. Additionally, the party with the most seats will be able to govern (to some extent) by decree — not everything comes down to a vote in Parliament.

The final consideration, at a distant third, is the leader. While party leaders are important — they are usually the loudest voice in their party, and have considerable say in where “party lines” fall for the second issue above — they are also replaceable. If the Conservative party wins, David Cameron will not necessarily become Prime Minister. He could be ousted. Gordon Brown could switch teams and be elected the leader of the Conservative party.

Not likely, mind you, but if enough people involved agreed it could be done.

But I have digressed. The MP is important — my MP has my vote and my voice in Parliament.

The second issue is that one must look at what that candidate/party/leader will do if they get in power. What are the policies and laws they are likely to enact? How will they handle a crisis? If so many Americans really dislike Obama’s health care plan, what did they think they were voting for? It is best not to get into the wishy-washy world of “hope”, “change”, “austerity”, or “standing up for rights”. Take a look at what people actually intend to do.

Now, with a 370-word digression behind us, let us look at the Conservative party of the UK. We will take a look at the pre-conceptions of a Canadian, the truth behind those preconceptions, the leadership and election manifesto.

Then, the good — an area where I think the party has the best policy of the lot. The bad — an area where I think the party has made a misstep with a policy. And the ugly — something that makes me wonder if this is the right party for my vote.

So here we have it: The Conservative Party.

Misguided Preconceptions

My initial idea of the Conservative Party is that it must match Canada’s version of the same. The recent history is simply too similar to wave away.

Both parties elected what were initially incredibly popular governments in the 1980s, behind a wave of new conservatism. Both Conservative parties fell hard after their leaders (Thatcher & Mulroney, for those who aren’t paying attention) gave way to new (Conservative) Prime Ministers. Both Conservative parties were afterthoughts for more than a decade, until making a comeback with a new, young leader, after the opposing party’s Prime Minister left mid-term to have their Finance Minister/Chancellor take over the PM office.

So my initial reaction is that the Tories must be like the CRAP in Canada — that’s Conservative Reform Alliance Party, for you non-Canadians — and that my feelings for the Canadian Conservative party are transferable to the Conservative party in the UK.

The Truth

The truth is that the Conservatives in the UK are both very like and very different from the Canadian party of the same name. That 1980s heyday and 1990s collapse were very similar. But that does not make their longer-term histories or recoveries identical.

The Canadian version of the party is, essentially, the official opposition. While it spent the early days as the ruling party in Canada, it has formed only six ruling governments since 1900 — leaving it most often on the outside looking in.

The British Tories, however, have spent most of the 20th century governing the UK (see chart).

Furthermore, the means by which they have rehabilitated themselves is much different. While the Canadian Conservatives rejuvenated themselves by embracing their right-wing grassroots and forming an alliance with the Reform Party of Canada, the British Conservatives have gone in the other direction — embracing some centrist and left-wing ideals that they would have previously refused to touch.

While the Conservative Party of Canada attracts some and frightens others away as being the Canadian version of the Republican Party, the Tories here have those effects by being the party of the ruling class. They turn off voters due to a sense of entitlement, an air of superiority, and a tendency to trod upon those less fortunate then themselves. This is a far cry from the grassroots of embracing the Reform Party, Western Canada, and some of the ideals of the Republican Party in Canada.

In short, while the cover looks awfully familiar, the book inside is quite different.

The Leader

The Conservative Party has elected a leader who, rather than representing the rank-and-file of the party instead represents those that they are trying to woo. David Cameron is young (for a politician), and almost certainly more left-leaning than those he leads. But a right-wing party trying to win back voters needs to reclaim the centre.

The Manifesto

The Conservative election manifesto is called an invitation to join the government of Britain. It is very much that — a traditional conservative small-government manifesto. The central idea is to scale back government intervention in people’s lives — less big government, more “Big Society” to replace the current “Broken Britain.”

The Good

My favourite part of the Conservative campaign is in regard to schools. As a parent-to-be, an issue that would have never previously on my radar is front and centre.

I am prone to think that the knee-jerk reaction that Karen and I have that schools here “aren’t good” is due to the differences in the systems. The UK system looks nothing like the French or Canadian ones.

Whatever the system, though, there is no doubt that the Labour government has pumped a ton of money in to schools over the past decade, but that money has not been well-spent — UK school results are actually declining.

One of my biggest frustrations with the UK is that you cannot choose things for yourself if they are provided by the government. Your doctors, hospitals and other government services are defined by where you live — no matter what you want.

Well, the Tories would do away with this where schools are concerned — probably elsewhere too, based on their underlying ideals. These schools would be government-funded, and could be started by parents or charities (so long as they were not being run for profit). This, of course, would allow for parental choice and competition for the tax dollars — a good thing.

Of no small importance is that the timing of this change will allow for schools to be established, and for there to be results to analyze by the time my child is due to attend one. The Tories get a giant tick-mark under “education” for me.

The Bad

On the other hand, the Tories also want to reduce the Inheritance Tax.

I know, they’re the conservative party — reducing taxes ought to be their thing. But the Inheritance Tax should be the last one to go. The reason is quite simple: Money inherited is not earned.

Reducing inheritance taxes gives away money without gaining anything in return. Instead of everybody being rewarded more for their effort — the impact of reducing income tax, say — individuals are given rewards based on who they happen to have as family members.

There are better taxes to cut. Less inheritance tax will not create jobs, spur investment, or help the economy recover. It reminds me of that “entitled” feeling.

I know that I pay more in, tax-wise, than I get out. That’s OK. But I would rather not pay even more in (or get even less out) so that people who were born into an advantaged situation can further line their pockets with their parents’ money.

The Ugly

It’s small, but it’s quite the blight in my eyes.

A £150 tax credit for married couples.

In a government manifesto that’s all about small government, there’s this.

I like the idea of small government, I really do. I like a safety net, but not a bloated one. I don’t want the government spying on me with CCTV around every corner. I prefer a government that won’t tell me that I can only go to this doctor, my children can only go to that school, or that I ought to be married to the person I live with. It annoys me more to think that there are people who will stick it out for £150. It’s not a lot, but it can seem like a lifeline to somebody struggling to make ends meet.

I’d like a government who didn’t care whether two consenting adults living together were married, unmarried, divorced, or married to completely different people.

Because they shouldn’t. It’s none of their business.

The Bottom Line

The Conservatives are not the party I assumed they would be — they are much more interesting and nuanced. But they do trouble me.

They care about my marital status. They appear to put more weight on passing success to one’s heirs than they do on making it easier for people to better themselves.

I am fond of some of their stated policies, and feel that their left-leaning leader will stop them from going too far in the directions I find to be negative — they seem more like bones for the party’s base, rather than plans for the country.

On the other hand, it’s hard to believe that a socially conservative party is OK with gay marriages (sorry, civil partnerships) while trying to promote the traditional family unit. It’s hard to believe that — in the wake of an expense scandal — a move on the inheritance tax is not driven by self-interest.

And two of the pillars of their platform are that “Britain is broken”, and that individuals and communities should step up and do things like set up schools. Is this what people do within a broken society? Sit around and wait for government’s permission to start their own school?

When I look at their policies, even though I like much of what I see, there also seems to be a slight disconnect. The question I need to answer for myself is whether that disconnect is real, or if it’s a lingering distaste from my initial misconceptions, associating the UK party with their Canadian namesakes.