Unrepentant Glenda still stands by Thatcher tirade

ANYBODY who thought they might have seen the last of former Hampstead and Kilburn MP Glenda Jackson following her retirement from the House of Commons last year has been forced to think again. She’s returned to acting, and pops up everywhere, giving one grouch-laden interview after another to explain how her two-career life panned out. Most recently, she’s been giving her thoughts alongside a photo-spread in the US magazine Entertainment Weekly. They usually include some reference to how winning an Oscar is not worth all the fuss, which is perhaps easier for an actor to say when you’ve won two.

To EW, she explains her life living in her Telegraph columnist son Dan Hodges’ basement (which is apparently good for when he need babysitting), and reflects on how much harder it is for women to succeed in both politics and the arts than it is for men. The interview should come with a health advisory for some of our local Tories, however. Glenda, we find, is completely unrepentant about her Thatcher-knocking speech in the House of Commons which made them choke with rage due to its timing days after the former Conservative prime minister had died; it was her most talked about contribution during her final term as a member of parliament, and possibly of all time.

“Anything legal I could’ve done to get the stink of Margaret Thatcher out of government, I’d have a go at,” she tells EW, before moving on to her defence of that speech: “I didn’t expect to be called upon to speak. But I sat and listened to history being rewritten and I attempted to redress the balance a little. I didn’t go after her as a person. I went after her government and I stand by what I said and I always will.”