I am comparing the first volume of Margaret Thatcher’s autobiography with John Campbell’s ‘The Iron Lady‘ and the authorised biography by Charles Moore.  I am trying to construct a network map of the combination of political entrepreneurship, chance and political acumen that allowed her to redefine UK politics.

This is the schematic of the two stages in the 1975 leadership election to the Conservative Party with the best available information on who did the Tory MPs vote for.  Data was kindly provided by Professor Philip Cowley based on a comprehensive research project on the actions of Conservative MPs in that period.

And this is a more speculative run of an MDS of the same data, that condense two time points, separated by a week, into one frame.  If Thatcher could conceivably be considered a different person at the two time points and the two events considered as one then this would have been meaningful.  As it stands it is just a ‘cute’ graph 🙂