Today is election day across the UK for MEPs and local councils and just about every blog will be running with the story.

However TheEye has a penchant for remembering.

It was 5 years ago today that we lost The Gipper at the fine age of 93.

Yesterday a tearful Nancy Reagan, pictured here with House of Representatives Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) unveiled a bronze statue of the great man in the Capitol Rotunda on Capitol Hill, Washington.

She is still active at 87 and joined many Reagan-era politicians and policymakers including James Baker, Reagan’s Treasury Secretary and friend who she sat with.

When in office his average approval rating was 57% and when he left the White House it was, historically, a staggering 64%. He brought conservatives together with people who wouldn’t have traditionally associated themselves with the Republican Party.

TheEye has fond memories of him and the part he played in forming the Special Relationship with the UK…a form of words that only us East-Pondians use now. Successive governments have turned it in to a meaningless slogan.

However consider this one example of how he was one of the crowbars who moved a world. And weep for what the US and the UK have in the place of two giants who bestrode the world stage in the 1980’s