Thatcher's cultural legacy

A.O. Scott considers it:

Her ascendancy was a result of tensions and contradictions within British society that also produced a singularly vibrant culture of opposition. Those forces predated her 1979 election: punk rock, realist television dramas, agitprop theater and caustically satirical fiction were all features of the earlier ’70s, when the country was governed by Edward Heath and James Callaghan, two of the least charismatic statesmen in modern European history. But Thatcher deepened and sharpened the contradictions. Her impatient, confrontational populism can be seen as a reaction against the disorder amplified and travestied by punk, but her impatience with decorum and hypocrisy, her assault on customs and institutions, was itself a form of punk.