The Iron Lady (film) The Iron Lady (film) The Iron Lady is a 2011 British-French biographical drama film based on the life and career of Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013), a British stateswoman and politician who was the first ever female and longest-serving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of the 20th century. The film was directed by Phyllida Lloyd. Thatcher is portrayed primarily by Meryl Streep, and, in her formative and early political years, by Alexandra Roach. Thatcher's husband, Denis Thatcher (1915–2003), is portrayed by Jim Broadbent, and by Harry Lloyd as the younger Denis. Thatcher's longest-serving cabinet member and eventual deputy, Geoffrey Howe, is
Prime Minister of Canada prime minister's discretion and unaccountable to parliament. At the end of the 20th century and into the 21st, analysts—such as Jeffrey Simpson, Donald Savoie, Andrew Coyne, and John Gomery—argued that both parliament and the Cabinet had become eclipsed by prime ministerial power; Savoie wrote: "The Canadian prime minister has little in the way of institutional check, at least inside government, to inhibit his ability to have his way." Indeed, the position has been described as undergoing a "presidentialisation", to the point that its incumbents publicly outshine the actual head of state (and prime minister's spouses are sometimes called the "First