Why newspapers are picking on an old lady

Luck, it was agreed by Will Hutton in The Observer and Tony Parsons in The Mirror, was the key factor in Margaret Thatcher's record as Prime Minister: luck that her enemies were "pantomime villains" like General Galtieri and Arthur Scargill, luck in the global timing of her economic experiment, and so on. But the old bird wasn't so lucky in the timing of the announcement that she is retiring, on doctor's orders, from public speaking.

According to Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail, it was "a poignant irony" that her withdrawal should coincide with Iain Duncan Smith's espousal of a new, caring Conservatism, thereby breaking the last link with the party's Thatcherite inheritance.

We may not speak ill of the dead, but it's OK, apparently, to speak ill of the ill: in particular, a woman of 76 who has suffered a series of mini-strokes and consequent memory lapses. One might have thought that her medical condition would elicit some sympathy, like a once-respected great-aunt who has gone slightly dotty and become a public embarrassment. Not a bit of it. Apart from Maggie loyalists, Simon Heffer in The Sunday Telegraph and Bruce Anderson in The Independent on Sunday, no one else found it poignant so much as a chance to put the boot in. The Observer's Gaby Hinsliff said: "She is not so much bowing out of the limelight as being dragged from it."

From all parts of the political spectrum, the media lined up to give her what rugby players call a vigorous shoeing, though maybe "handbagging" would be a better phrase: from the Left, to quote Parsons, "because Maggie Thatcher's distinguishing feature was her cruelty" and "she showed so little compassion to anyone else during her three terms in office"; from the Right, according to Peter Oborne in The Observer, because "she was always despised" and "has grown old disgracefully", undermining her successors, John Major and William Hague, making "Labour electable and the Tories ungovernable".

As Lord Deedes, a family friend, put it in The Daily Telegraph, some ex-leaders, when they leave the bridge, "prefer to retire to their cabin and lie down". Others, like Thatcher, "can be heard shouting impetuously at the man at the wheel".

If The Guardian's letters page is anything to go by, the papers were reflecting a vindictive public mood. "Rejoice, rejoice!" said Nick Graham from Cumbria, echoing the Iron Lady's triumphant riposte about the Falklands war. "Now we really do have something to celebrate in 2002," wrote John McConnell from Tyne and Wear. "The champagne is on ice," wrote another.

Thatcher didn't get as bad a press as this when she fell from grace in 1990. Then the media looked on open-mouthed at the historic events unfolding before them, rather like watching the collapse of the Berlin Wall two years earlier.

When finally she dies, we can expect the tone to be more respectful, as she is given her place in history, alongside Lloyd George and Churchill, among the great leaders of the 20th century - transforming British society, breaking the power of the trade unions, restoring the nation's self-confidence, and so on.

For the moment, however, the media hounds are relishing the chance to tear the old fox to pieces to Tony Parsons's bitter cry, " Rot in hell, Maggie Thatcher." It is as though the papers had been storing up their venom for years and sensed that this might be the last chance to bare their fangs before hunting is abolished.