How much would you pay to have afternoon tea with Margaret Thatcher? £440,000 was the successful bid at a British Conservative Party ball earlier this year. The prize, sold during a fund-raising auction, also included a copy of a famous oil painting of the battleaxe-in-chief.
The old lady still has many admirers. Her 80th birthday party earlier this month brought the west London traffic to a standstill and lit the night with the flashbulbs of press photographers. More than 600 people including Queen Elizabeth and prime minister Tony Blair gathered at a Knightsbridge hotel to toast her with the finest champagne and celebrate her contribution to British public life.
On the evening of May 5th last, as counting began in the general election which was to give Blair his third consecutive term in office, Lady Thatcher was reportedly asked what was her greatest legacy. "New Labour," she replied. It was one of the greatest barbed compliments in modern politics - and just as depressing for the millions of "old Labour" voters as for those who had just voted Tory. But nevertheless true. Mr Blair won - as he had in 1997 and 2001 - by ditching nearly everything the Labour Party traditionally stood for and adopting the conservative economic policies beloved of "Middle England".
But what of Thatcher's legacy here - in a country where she was a hate-figure of Cromwellian proportions during much of her 11-years in No 10 Downing Street? If she came to Ireland today she would find big changes since the 1980s, when her visits to Dublin created outpourings of hostility and anger. She might read with alarm that the current Taoiseach professes to be a socialist - but then, remembering that Tony Blair also claims a similar affiliation, would relax. So what kind of country would she find? She would note with approval that Ireland has one of the most right-wing governments in the EU, firmly committed to a host of her principles - low taxes, a business friendly environment, free trade, privatisation, competition and high levels of home ownership.
She would note, with satisfaction, that Telecom Éireann had gone down the path she set for British Telecom two decades earlier and doubtless be pleased that British phone companies are now major players in the Irish market. She would hear that Aer Lingus is also likely to take the privatisation runway once plotted by her for British Airways, that the ESB and Bord na Móna look set to follow. She might ask what happened to Irish Steel and find confirmation of her belief that there is no place for state-subsidised "dinosaurs" in a modern economy. She would listen to complaints about the decline in manufacturing jobs and say, "You can't buck the market", pointing to the vast growth in new economic sectors, especially "services" - as happened in post-mining, post-industrial Britain.
Looking at other "semi-states", she would likely approve of the emergence of new corporate identities for the various components of CIÉ and could be forgiven for assuming that Iarnród Éireann is a stand-alone company on the brink of privatisation.
She might have heard already from her friend and ally Rupert Murdoch about his success here. Yet she might still be astonished at the sheer numbers of people reading his Sun and Sunday Times newspapers and the forest of Sky dishes on Irish homes.
She would see that the financial services sector has undergone a transforming shake-up similar to the "Big Bang" she introduced in the City of London. She would praise the IFSC and the vibrant Irish Stock Exchange which, like London, has abandoned the open-cry system in favour of electronic trading. She would also discover that we have become a nation of shareholders (though not yet quite on the scale she would like) - and be wryly amused that the most widely held share in Ireland, with almost half-a-million owners, is that of the British company Vodafone. (And that the second is Irish Life & Permanent, which emerged from the demutualisation of a building society - a trend which she launched and encouraged in Britain.)
She would approve of the swell of parents who send their children to fee-paying schools and the proliferation of private hospitals; she would travel over tolled roads and bridges on her way to look at the shops. She could be forgiven - briefly - for wondering if she was really in a foreign country when faced with the profusion of British high street stores - from her favourite Marks & Spencer to Tesco and Boots, Next and B&Q, Waterstone's and Argos, Habitat and Harvey Nichols, House of Fraser and French Connection and on and on ad nauseam.
She would be thrilled to see her beloved Poles and Czechs and Lithuanians - whom she helped to free from the shackles of Communist rule - migrating to a land of jobs and opportunities.
Above all, she would cheer on Ryanair with its anti-union policies and the way it revolutionised air travel and brought so many sclerotic state-subsidised European airlines to their knees. She would discover that supermarkets can open 24 hours, that pub opening times have been "modernised" and that major strikes - like those which could close the banks for months on end, knock out the postal system, or cripple public transport for weeks - are virtually unknown to anyone under 30, just like in Britain.
She would hear that despite Ireland's neutrality, Shannon Irish airport was used to aid the war effort in Iraq - and recall how an earlier Taoiseach had refused the use of ports to Winston Churchill.
Returning home to London, with perhaps a souvenir pack of Barry's, she would put the kettle on and make a nice cup of tea and wonder, "What on earth was all the fuss about?" And her contented smile would be reflected on the gleaming surface of a silver teapot - a gift from years ago. She might notice the inscribed initials CJH, wonder whatever happened to her old sparring partner, and remember that they must be about the same age.