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Comment by noizejoy | Hacker News Reader

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noizejoy·

> Thatcher won two landslide re-elections for a reason.

Arguably the reason was the war, not domestic policy [0]

[0] https://history.com/news/margaret-thatcher-falklands-war

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You're downvoted but I don't think you're wrong. In general it seems to be the case that if you're waging a war and you're not getting completely crushed the electorate (or at least the "undecided" voters") tends to rally around whoever happens to be in charge. And indeed I think it's fairly safe to say that most agree that Thatcher benefitted electorally from a strong response to the invasion.

I should add that as a Scot I'm definitely not a fan of hers (you just grow up there knowing "Thatcher Bad") but I'm not quite at "put a stake through her heart and garlic round her neck"[0] :)

[0] - https://twitter.com/halaljew/status/1294414600566382598

Gulf war didn't save Senior Bush from the bad-economy, neither did the Iraq War help Tony Blair's popularity.

It's a lot more complex than war-helps-current-leader, at least outside the US. It depends on the war and the context.

Fair point, these are actually great counterexamples

They are. That war was also unusual in that it was an attack on a country far away that wasn’t a threat to the US or UK, and there was little to be gained.

It was a strange time.

I think that was the reason for one of them, certainly. But then she and our armed forces did a tremendous job in reclaiming the Falklands from a fascist dictatorship.

Nothing in that article indicates that the war overshadowed her domestic policy, both contributed to her success.

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