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Bridgehead Regained?
A ten-foot bronze Ronald Reagan statue somehow incorporating the Berlin Wall may overcome setbacks which would stop lesser metal, and be erected at America’s London embassy.

The proposed statue was rejected last year on the grounds Reagan had not been dead long enough,  and/or because it was “lacking gravitas.”  One account has the statue’s failings being structural:

“The original sculpture depicts Reagan leaning on a pedestal, but [statue fabricator] Walker said this design was rejected for the British statue because the pose would be seen as weak in that part of the world.“

 Alfred the Leaner 

How these obstacles can be bypassed is unclear, but Westminster reportedly will ponder the question again. This urge to create facts on the ground is endemic in the fabled Westminster Council, where the Tories came to grief in the nineties for selling off public housing as a means of driving out Labour voters.  One Conservative Council Member committed suicide during the “homes for votes” investigation, and another paid 12 million Pounds as punishment.

The statue scheme is another effort to shape the battlefield,  plunking Reagan in front of the US Embassy during its final days in Grovesnor Square, allowing the statue to then land at the new South London Embassy site as a package deal.

Sadly no representation of the proposed statue is available, but let’s take the leaping stallions  at the College Station Bush Library’s Berlin Wall, and in our minds eye substitute a spry, youthful Ronald Reagan.