Derek Hatton attacks Lady Thatcher

Derek Hatton, the one-time de facto leader of Liverpool City Council who was expelled from the Labour Party by its then leader Neil Kinnock in 1986 for being a member of the Marxist Militant Tendency, has stuck the knife into Lady Thatcher, lamenting the fact that her mother did not kill her before she was born.

Speaking to the Cyprus Mail – he now runs a property company from the country – he was asked if he had ever “warmed” to the Iron Lady, who will be 85 this year. Hatton (pictured in his 1980s heyday) replied: "The only problem I've got with her, with her mother, is that she never believed in abortion. She more than anybody destroyed the world we knew in England and she created a situation which actually produced the financial problems we have now. She is responsible for the current mess."

Needless to say, this has not gone down well with Lady T's friends, among them former Tory Party chairman Lord Tebbit. "It is always unpleasant even thinking about Derek Hatton," he told the Daily Mail. said. "But this is exactly the sort of thing that I expect would come out of the mouth of such a low-grade slob."

It is a view likely to be echoed by Gordon Brown, which might be of more concern to 60-year-old Hatton. He recently told the Liverpool Echo that he wanted to return to British politics, standing as a Labour MP. Given Brown's fondness for the old girl – she has been a guest at Downing Street and a new portrait is on its way to Number 10 – a revival of Hatton’s political career seems remote.