POLITICAL leaders from York and North Yorkshire have agreed that Lady Thatcher changed Britain forever, but clashed on whether the changes were for good or bad.

Tory York Outer MP Julian Sturdy said he was “deeply saddened” by her death, saying she was a huge part of the reason he was in politics today.

“While I understand she polarised opinion, for me, and I expect for many others, she was one of the greatest Prime Ministers this country has ever had,” he said.

“She came to power in 1979, at a time when the country was being crippled by trade unionism and a Keynesian economic consensus that simply wasn’t working.”

But York Central Labour MP Hugh Bayley said her policies had destroyed British manufacturing and cost millions of jobs, and she had been divisive and dismissive of every other point of view.

“I met her several times as one of the nurses’ trade union representatives and it was like talking to a brick wall,” he added.

Anne McIntosh, Conservative MP for Thirsk, Malton and Filey, said Lady Thatcher enabled British companies to compete and open up markets previously not available to them. “She will be greatly missed but her legacy will live on,” she added.

Coun Ian Gillies, Tory group leader on City of York Council, said she was the “giant of her political generation, who did more to shape the way we live and govern than anyone else since the war.”

City of York Council’s Labour leader, James Alexander, said: “Whether you agreed or disagreed with what she did in Government, she had conviction in her beliefs enough to effect change in an environment where it is notoriously difficult to achieve change. She was a strong leader who carried her party with her, but who alienated herself with an important and significant proportion of the population.”