Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has died

Former Conservative Prime Minister, Baroness Margaret Thatcher has passed away after suffering a stroke earlier today, she was 87 years-old.

Her official spokesman Lord Bell said: “It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning.”

The Queen has said that she was sad to hear of Baroness Thatcher’s death and Her Majesty will be sending a private message of sympathy to the family, Buckingham Palace has said.

The current British Prime Minister, David Cameron, has said: “Today is a truly sad day for our country. We’ve lost a great Prime Minister, a great leader, a great Briton. As our first woman Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher succeeded against all the odds, and the real thing about Margaret Thatcher is that she didn’t just lead our country, she saved our country. I believe she’ll go down in history as the greatest British peacetime Prime Minister.

“Today most of all we should think of her family. We’ve lost somebody great in our public life but they’ve lost a much loved mother and grandmother and we should think of them today. Her legacy will be the fact that she served her country so well and that she saved our country, and that she showed immense courage in doing so, and people will be learning about what she did and her achievements in decades, probably centuries to come. That’s her legacy, but today we must also think of her family.”

Baroness Thatcher is the only woman to have ever served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, she was also the longest-serving Prime Minister of the 20th Century (1979 – 1990).

“Power is like being a lady… if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.” – Margaret Thatcher