BELGRADE, THURSDAY

RECENT REVELATIONS THAT in 2003 former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher urged mercenary Simon Mann to get on with his plot to stage a coup in Equatorial Guinea, have caused observers to speculate that the so-called Iron Lady may well have been planning a similar path to return herself to power in the United Kingdom.

Maggie, as she was universally known, was unceremoniously ditched as British Prime Minister in 1990, in what she described as “treachery with a smile”. The party that had hailed her for over a decade and through three election victories, turned on her and ended her reign in Caesar-like fashion.

“If she had been stabbed at the foot of Cromwell’s statute, it would not have been worse than what happened, as one by one men whose careers she had made, and some whose careers she had unmade, lined up to stick the knife in,” says historian Rab Idtorie, whose new biography of Thatcher, Is It The N or the O You Don’t Understand? is due for publication in March. “She was very publicly assassinated. Was she bitter? You bet.”

Henry Hooray-Bulingdon, a right-wing commentator whose books Kill ‘Em All The Lord Will Know His Own and God Just Isn’t Up To Being English have both been best sellers, says he knew then Lady Thatcher towards the end of her life, when she was said to be suffering dementia.

“I’m not sure of that. I think there might have been a touch of the *Chin Gigante about it. I think she was placing herself in a position of plausible deniability in case a coup did go ahead and it was was unsuccessful. That’s why this information from **Wonga Coup leader Simon Mann is so interesting. I believe she was testing him when she told him to get on with the coup he was planning. It’s no coincidence that her son Mark was linked to it all. ***Old Scratcher. I suppose we’ll never know. Had Mann been successful she might have taken it further. Wasn’t Chavez of Venezuela next on her list? But can you imagine it, Lady Thatcher marching on London like some latter day Boudica? I’d have signed on, I’ll tell you. And I know plenty of others who would have too. Maggie, Maggie, Maggie!”

*Vincent Gigante, former Boss of the Genovese Crime Family, who used to present as having lost his marbles when under FBI surveillance.

**Plot to overthrow leader of Equatorial Guinea which went ahead in 2004. Led by Simon Mann. Financed by among others Mark Thatcher, son of Margaret Thatcher. It failed spectacularly.

***Scratcher was a nickname for Mark Thatcher (Public school culture still pervades in the British upper echelons) 

                -  ED