Margaret Thatcher's coffin is carried at St Paul's
Margaret Thatcher's coffin is carried at St Paul's

It's not news that Margaret Thatcher was not universally loved by the nation, nor is it a revelation that some on the left have been dribbling with desire at the thought of her death.

The website "Is Thatcher Dead Yet?" has been around for some time and the fact that Margaret Thatcher death party packs were on sale at the TUC conference last year suggests that this morbid fascination is not limited to what's usually known as the "extreme left" (although the packs were later withdrawn from sale).

This does not make it any less disturbing however that there is a small but significant band of leftists whose hatred is such that they would party in the street at the death of an old lady.

Now perhaps I should admit that when I heard of the death of Kim Jong Il in 2011 I was more inclined to smile than to cry. Double standards perhaps - but it is a mark of the Thatcher haters that they cannot tell the difference between her and people like Kim Jong Il.

The most obvious being that death was the only mechanism by which Kim Jong Il could be removed from his position of over-tyrant of North Korea. Indeed the death of the right people seems to be the only way in which the poor average North Korean can hope to receive the most basic levels of freedom and provision.

By contrast Margaret Thatcher could have been removed by a general election if she had been hated by enough of the people (she wasn't) and of course by the internal machinations of the Tory party.

That this in fact happened over twenty years ago seems to be lost on the party-goers, a fact that's all the more surprising given most of the revellers appear to have been small children, if they were born at all, when Thatcher left office.

So what can we conclude about those who attended the Margaret Thatcher death parties with such glee?

First of all it seems fair to assume that the younger elements of the parties are those who have been indoctrinated, probably by their parents (who might actually have real grievances), to hate the very mention of words like "Thatcher" and "Tory" as the embodiment of the devil.

Secondly that the level of hatred felt by these people, old and young alike, is so off the scale that they have lost any semblance of humanity.

As someone who aspires to be an evil right-winger I happen to think that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown "wrecked the country" just as they find Thatcher guilty of the same, yet it does not occur to me that I might want either of them to die or to celebrate when that eventually happens. I would have to really hate them to wish that. I don't.

Yet this startling hatred clearly does exist on parts of the left is and it blinds those who suffer from it. Do these people realise that by celebrating someone's death in the manner that they do they are descending to the level of Fred Phelps of "God Hates Fags" fame?

Nearly everyone of all political persuasions condemns Phelps' tiny sect for their celebrating the deaths of American soldiers, victims of gun massacres and even of spectators at the Boston Marathon this week. Do those celebrating the death of Thatcher not realise they are doing the exact same thing?

I can't help but feel that people with such hatred and intolerance are the kind who would be the first to put people up against the wall when the revolution comes.