Veja and Época would replace Dilma with Margaret.

247 - Believe it or not, Margaret Thatcher has more followers in Brazil than in England. While in London there are even parties planned to celebrate her passing and several analysts point to an ambiguous legacy left by the Iron Lady, who triggered the Falklands War, promoted policies that generated social inequality, and supported racial segregation in South Africa (while her son did business with the apartheid regime), here in Brazil she is celebrated in the conservative press.

See, for example, a list of several lessons Dilma should learn from Thatcher. Read below:

President Dilma Rousseff and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher - who died this MondayIn London, both women came to power by employing some similar characteristics: both were, in their time, ruthless, centralizing, and uncompromising. They did not assume the government of their countries thanks to charisma or charm – nor did they run their cabinets in a peaceful and good-humored manner. However, the similarities end there. While the Brazilian president could use her firm hand to implement painful reforms, as Thatcher did in Great Britain, Dilma has been applying her intransigence in the opposite direction: through loose fiscal policy, negligence regarding inflation, and state interventionism. 

The Great Britain that welcomed Thatcher to her first term in Parliament in 1979 was very different from Brazil today. The British state functioned like a bureaucratic behemoth, neutralized by decades of inefficiency, the protectionism implemented after the war, and with the state controlling countless companies. Although Brazil fits this description in many ways, the country finds itself in a more dynamic position due to regulatory advances and market liberalization that occurred in the 1990s. In the European country, the influence of socialist-leaning governments still plagued the private sector in the 1970s. Companies were forced to keep many of their employees on collective leave due to the impossibility of making layoffs. Even so, the country lived in constant strikes due to the political power of the unions. Large fortunes were taxed at 83% by the state, and the savings of the average citizen at 33%. The capital gains tax reached 98%. The unemployment rate was nearing 10% and annual inflation exceeded 20%.

Thatcher was averse to charitable policies that would leave the population enslaved to state benefits – unlike welfare programs such as Bolsa Família. She herself was born into a humble family and had to endure numerous sacrifices to avoid perpetuating the poverty in which she was raised. When she came to power, 30% of the country's housing (the equivalent of 1,5 million homes) was state-owned. One of her first changes was to encourage the population to acquire their homes. According to her, state control should be limited to health and public safety – and the economy should be governed by the principles of the free market. "Governments don't create wealth. That's done by industries and services. It's the people with their own background and their own capacity for initiative," he said in an interview with VEJA in March 1994. In pre-Thatcher Britain, state interventionism reached the point where any price increase required prior authorization from the Ministry of Finance – a model that, ironically, seems to serve as inspiration for the regressive policy being implemented in Argentina by Cristina Kirchner's government.

Faced with this unfavorable situation, the newly appointed Prime Minister could have used numerous political tools to guarantee popularity and the continuity of the Conservative Party in control of Parliament – ​​and, above all, to solidify her own position within the Party, since she herself was the target of intense friendly fire. But Thatcher opted for the more tortuous and unpopular path, believing it was the only solution to definitively pull Great Britain out of the financial crisis that plagued it.

She confronted inflation with an iron fist, employing neoclassical economic theory: raising interest rates and cutting public spending. She reduced the size of the state through systematic cuts in subsidies and the elimination of price controls. She reduced spending on all government programs except the police, defense, and healthcare system. She lowered tax rates on wealth and capital gains, but to offset the loss of revenue, she increased taxes on the service sector, which was the only lifeline for the British economy. 

In 1981, the short-term effects of such policies were devastating. Consumption plummeted, unemployment had risen to 12%, private investment fell by 11%, and inflation stubbornly continued to climb. This economic scenario, coupled with public discontent, made the first two years of Thatcher's government the most unpopular period of her administration. At the beginning of 1981, only 25% of the population approved of the Iron Lady's management – ​​and even the Conservatives doubted that Thatcher could withstand the pressure. The American author Richard Aldous recounts, in his book *Thatcher and Reagan: A Difficult Relationship* (Record Publishing House), that 364 economists from leading British universities sent a letter to the government condemning the economic measures adopted by the Prime Minister. In Brazil, at the end of her second year in office, the economy under Dilma's administration is stagnating, but her popularity remains high, with her government approving of more than 60% of the population.

However, from 1982 onwards, the recessionary effects subsided, inflation fell to 8,6%, and the economy resumed growth. From then on, the government carried out an extensive privatization program, in which companies such as Jaguar and British Petroleum (BP) were acquired by private investors. Thatcher chose not to privatize public health, but implemented management techniques to make it more efficient. By 1987, inflation had fallen to 4% per year and the economy was growing at 5%. Falling unemployment and sustained wage increases evidenced the economic recovery.

Thatcher was in power from 1979 to 1990, more than enough time for the principles she championed (less government, less spending, and independence from the European Union) to become deeply ingrained in the British way of life – enduring to this day. This does not mean, however, that the former Prime Minister was universally popular: she was ousted from power in 1990 when her own party turned against her. The trigger for the Conservative Party's internal crisis that led to Thatcher's downfall was her tenacious refusal to integrate Great Britain into the Eurozone, predicting it would be a chaotic mess dominated by Germany and shaken by economic crises. The 22 years since then only confirm her prediction.

Brazil, on the other hand, has much sharper weapons to combat economic ills, as it is far from experiencing the recession that plagued Great Britain when Thatcher took power. However, it is governed by the wrong ideas. A booming domestic market, stable public debt, and the confidence of investors who remain in the country despite the PT's interventionism would be sufficient tools for the president to implement unpopular but effective measures, such as a true tax reform – and not the patchwork quilt that has been woven in recent months, in which taxes on certain sectors rise and others are reduced, creating legal uncertainty for investors. Instead of opening the economy to foreign competition as a way to stimulate private investment and productivity, the opposite is seen: protectionism for hand-picked sectors, such as the automotive industry, in exchange for maintaining employment. Unpopular measures are vetoed because they hinder electoral purposes. Dilma is Thatcher in reverse – worse for Brazil.

Época magazine argues that the Brazilian flag should be flown at half-mast. Check it out:

The journalists, the death of Lady Thatcher, and the mourning of the liberals.

The Iron Lady never enjoyed great prestige in newsrooms, but her work deserves an explicit demonstration of reverence.

JOSÉ FUCS

I offer here my (modest) tribute to Margaret Thatcher. This morning, at the beginning of Época's weekly editorial meeting, I suggested that a minute of silence be observed in honor of Lady Thatcher. They laughed, and the meeting went on. I myself probably made the proposal more as a provocation to my colleagues, who know of my admiration for the Iron Lady and her work. Among them, she doesn't enjoy much prestige, but she certainly deserves an explicit demonstration of reverence.

The death of Thatcher, at 87, after a long ordeal with a degenerative disease, should be marked by a period of official mourning in the country. If President Dilma decreed three days of official mourning when former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez died a month ago, why shouldn't the same apply to Lady Thatcher, whose historical role was far more significant than that of the caudillo Chávez? If Chávez deserved three days, perhaps, in Thatcher's case, the Brazilian flag should fly at half-mast for a week. Or a month, who knows – if the number of days of mourning has any relation to the importance of the deceased.

In the 1980s, when England had become hostage to union activism, shaken by endless strikes that paralyzed the country, Thatcher confronted the barricades erected in the streets by the unions. Even her peers in the Conservative Party feared the negative electoral impact that her brave stance could cause. After closing obsolete and unproductive coal mines and promoting the privatization of public services, she put the United Kingdom back on the path of capitalism and free enterprise. She returned the country to the prosperous days that had marked much of its history. Along with former US President Ronald Reagan, she resurrected the ideals of liberalism worldwide, which were somewhat waning in those Cold War times, when the Non-Aligned Movement and social democracy flourished in the West.

Because of her determination, achievements, and contribution to the cause of freedom, Lady Thatcher's death is irreparable. Her ideas, however, are timeless. Ironically, Thatcher passed away during a period of increasing state intervention in the global economy and rising public spending financed by her widow across almost the entire planet—two policies she bravely fought against while in power. The consolation is that Lady Thatcher will probably be laughing all the way to the bank from heaven when the bill for all this extravagance arrives.

We at 247 are sticking with the analysis from Diário do Centro do Mundo (read here).