Thatcher was very influential in how the EU is currently run.
And there is no way she would have sanctioned a referendum in the first place - read the links further up for confirmation.
You are on the wrong horse here.
Thatcher was very influential in how the EU is currently run.
And there is no way she would have sanctioned a referendum in the first place - read the links further up for confirmation.
You are on the wrong horse here.
We did BT, but no one likes it.
We could leave without a deal, but no one likes that either.
Parliament will never sort it out, and neither would Thatcher.
Those links 59, refer to the 80s, we don't live in a time warp, that's 30 years ago. Circumstances are very different now and anyone's views on the EU from 30 years ago are liable to have changed, mine certainly have, because the EU we are dealing with now 30 years later has also changed, it's now a very different beast to the one that Thatcher was dealing with back then. And I have no doubt, as I've always seen the world through a very similar prism to the saintly Margaret that, like me, she wouldn't like what she would see now and would want her beloved country out of the arrangement.
She certainly was an advocate of the Single Market, but back then she was attempting to lead the country's economic recovery after the Labour Government and Unions had turned us into the 'sick man of Europe' in the 70s. The EU was a growing market for us, so of course she welcomed the opportunity of tariff free and frictionless access to it. It's a declining market for us now, much less than 50% of exports head there now, and the % is reducing year on year. The free movement of people was not a concern back then either, the GB population was around 57 million and there were only 11 other countries in the SM at that time. Our population has increased by 20% to around 67 million since then and there are 27 other countries currently entitled to free access to our shores, a totally different situation. Even if you and the LibDems can't see the logistical impact this has on our public services 59, I know Mrs T would have, and she would have done something about it.
Below is from the Bismarck piece you linked, it shows quite clearly that Mrs T was already having reservations about the EU's direction of travel by the end of the 80s and "she began to turn against the European Community", there is no question that 30 years later she would have turned 100% against it.
"The Single European Act had enormous ramifications for the way the European Community was to be run. No only did it provide for the completion of the Single Market, it also simplified the decision-making in the European Council by extending the principle of qualified majority voting to a large number of issues that until then had been decided unanimously. As a result, it paved the way for the series of integrative measures that were pushed through during the late 1980s, leading to the Treaties of Maastricht in 1992. It was when Thatcher understood these consequences that she began to turn against the European Community in general and Jacques Delors in particular. She had come to realize that the commission president did not share the British hopes for ‘Thatcherism on a European scale.’ Still, Thatcher’s and Delors’ interests had been temporarily aligned for a short and decisive moment, with very lasting consequences for the European Community."
Well, we will never know Sinkov.
Without doubt she pushed for greater integration and for the EU to become bigger. Her aspiration was that Eastern block countries would join the party - which subsequently came to pass.
There were bound to be disagreements in the details - on many sides - but if Thatcher had been in power in the 90's she would have been pushing for EU expansion and greater integration - this is what she believed in.
And in most ways the EU today is pretty much what she wanted.
To say that she would be 100% against the EU today is wildly inaccurate. She was a committed Europhile, but she would have been pushing the UK's interests strongly as well.
Sorry 59, I don't agree with your statement above, over the years the Leopard EU has changed its spots, just look at the Brexit talks and May's deal, they sound like it is a bad deal for their EU with glum faces and sad dialogue, but underneath they must be wetting themselves with glee, O.K. it is ourselves who has wanted to leave and naturally they don't want that but their conduct could and should have been more amicable along the way, if that does not tell you anything look at Italy being told to scrap "Their" Budget and do another one as its not acceptable enough for the EU, and now an EU Army, For What purpose ? What Need ?
For me everything about the EU stinks, its unelected mouth pieces, its directives to all 28 Countries and their flippant dealings with those members, its general attitude to non EU Countries unless they have a finger in that trough, and now they are polishing the Jack boots again wanting a bloody army, and to make matter worse it was the leader of Germany who first voiced it FFS
Because I am naturally inquisitive and love to hear other opinions, during my recent visit to Prague I asked several dozen people who are Czech Republican citizens what they think of the EU.
It is worth noting they have maintained their own currency, but are forced to accept the Euro in shops and restaurants etc. To a man or woman it was a case of, "I wish we were leaving the EU like the UK are doing". They are not very favourable towards the Germans either!
But we do know 59, she wanted an EU of 'independent sovereign states', she flatly rejected the idea of a European Super State with the centralisation of power in Brussels, she said no to open borders, no to any increase in labour market regulations, she insisted that NATO was the means by which Europe was defended, so clearly that was no to a European Army, which despite Clegg claiming in the referendum campaign that this was no more than a scaremongering UKIP fantasy, is now very much on the agenda. Was Clegg deliberately lying or was he really ignorant of what his beloved EU was actually planning ? I wonder.
Anyway, don't wonder whether I'm making it up like Clegg did, this is what the good lady herself said in her 1988 Bruges speech. When you read this there can be doubt she would have no truck whatsoever the 2018 version of the EU, in fact I suspect she'd be somewhere to the right of the Mog in her opposition to it.
You can read it in it's entirety here if you want. https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107332
"My first guiding principle is this: willing and active cooperation between independent sovereign states is the best way to build a successful European Community.
To try to suppress nationhood and concentrate power at the centre of a European conglomerate would be highly damaging and would jeopardise the objectives we seek to achieve. Europe will be stronger precisely because it has France as France, Spain as Spain, Britain as Britain, each with its own customs, traditions and identity. It would be folly to try to fit them into some sort of identikit European personality. I am the first to say that on many great issues the countries of Europe should try to speak with a single voice. I want to see us work more closely on the things we can do better together than alone. Europe is stronger when we do so, whether it be in trade, in defence or in our relations with the rest of the world. But working more closely together does not require power to be centralised in Brussels or decisions to be taken by an appointed bureaucracy. Indeed, it is ironic that just when those countries such as the Soviet Union, which have tried to run everything from the centre, are learning that success depends on dispersing power and decisions away from the centre, there are some in the Community who seem to want to move in the opposite direction. We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels."
"It is the same with frontiers between our countries. Of course, we want to make it easier for goods to pass through frontiers. Of course, we must make it easier for people to travel throughout the Community. But it is a matter of plain common sense that we cannot totally abolish frontier controls if we are also to protect our citizens from crime and stop the movement of drugs, of terrorists and of illegal immigrants. And before I leave the subject of a single market, may I say that we certainly do not need new regulations which raise the cost of employment and make Europe's labour market less flexible and less competitive with overseas suppliers.
If we are to have a European Company Statute, it should contain the minimum regulations. And certainly we in Britain would fight attempts to introduce collectivism and corporatism at the European level—although what people wish to do in their own countries is a matter for them."
"My last guiding principle concerns the most fundamental issue—the European countries' role in defence. Europe must continue to maintain a sure defence through NATO. There can be no question of relaxing our efforts, even though it means taking difficult decisions and meeting heavy costs. It is to NATO that we owe the peace that has been maintained over 40 years."
They don't write them like that any more, sinkov. It has to be all PC and, on no account, must you upset anybody.
Maggie, for all her faults, had a team that backed her up at that time and she had the courage of her own convictions to stick up for her country, even though her and Scargill had done all they could to ruin it a few years before!