Songfacts®:

• In this song Costello vows to dance on Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's grave. He clarified the song's message in Q Magazine March 2008: "You shouldn't really celebrate when anybody dies, but I think she did this country a disservice in the things she tricked out of people."
• Costello explained how he came up with this song in a 1989 interview with On The Street: "The song was written at that extreme point, where that's what you feel. I kind of almost scrapped it a couple of times, I thought, that's not really the way I think, I'm more balanced than that. The arguments carried through the song are not balanced, they're not reasonable, they blame the wrong people for the wrong things, but you don't want like the social worker song, you know the person who understands everything. Writing the song is only a little bit better than kicking the television in when the news is on... The song is only a little bit short of mindless violence, isn't it?" (This interview is available at Rock's Backpages.)
• When Elvis Costello played Liverpool Philharmonic Hall in 2013 after Margaret Thatcher's death following dementia, this song was quickly requested. Costello prefaced it by mentioning his father Ross' 2011 death in Merseyside, having also suffered dementia - a fate he reflected, "I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, which I suppose Margaret Thatcher was."
• The Spike album was produced by T Bone Burnett along with Costello and Kevin Killen. Burnett was on the verge of becoming one of the most accomplished producers in the game. In the '90s, he helmed the Wallflowers album Bringing Down The Horse, Counting Crows' August And Everything After, and Gillian Welch's Revival.