The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) has found itself in hot water after listing former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as a “contemporary villain” alongside the likes of Osama Bin Laden and Adolf Hitler.
Mrs Thatcher is mentioned in a caption near a Punch and Judy display that looked at how British humour has changed over the decades.
It states: “Over the years the evil character in this seaside puppet show has shifted from the Devil to unpopular public figures including Adolf Hitler, Margaret Thatcher and Osama Bin Laden, to offer contemporary villains.”
Since the display was unveiled it has caused outrage. Speaking to LBC, Conservative MP for Bournemouth Sir Connor Burns said: “Whoever wrote that caption should be called out publicly for being a moron, or perhaps more usefully sent to read a Ladybird book of modern world history.”
Sir Connor claimed that it was “symptomatic of the woke, luvvie-dom nonsense that persists in our public institutions”.
Fellow senior Tory, Sir Iain Duncan Smith said that at a time when MPs were receiving death threats, the exhibition was “ill-thought and mendacious”.
He added: “[To] think that it is rational to propose that a politician of the stature of Margaret Thatcher would equate to any of those mass murderers and vile human beings. This sort of idiocy begs the question about funding. It would be a good idea if those who thought of this did a hard day’s work in among the rest of us.”
Director of The Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom said the display was disgraceful and that the museum “should be stripped of public funding”.
One outraged visitor to the V&A told the Telegraph: “I believe that this bracketing of Margaret Thatcher with a genocidal maniac and the worst terrorist of the 21st Century to be deeply offensive and repugnant and I am sure most people would agree. It is completely unacceptable in a taxpayer-funded institution.”
The Daily Express has sent the V&A a request for comment.
