This morning's Times includes an interview with Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor with whom Mrs. Thatcher crossed swords on more than one occasion during her time in office. Mrs Thatcher, he said, "wanted Europe, but a different Europe from that wanted by most of her European colleagues and me. From our point of view, this antagonism characterises British policy on Europe to this day."
That's one way of putting it. Perhaps it could best be said that she was ahead of the game in recognising even in the 1980s that something was very wrong with the direction that the European Union was taking. Admittedly, her European legacy is ambivalent. Her signing of the Single European Act in 1986 has blotted her copybook irrevocably in the eyes of some withdrawalists, and certainly in the earlier years of her premiership she supported the idea of a strong Europe - including the UK - as a counterweight to the Soviet Union. However, the arrival on the scene of the socialist President of the European Commission Jacques Delors opened her eyes to the real damage the European project was doing to British sovereignty. Her famous "No, No, No" speech was made in 1990, and there is no doubt that by then she was utterly opposed to the single currency or to any further extension of powers of the European Commission. Indeed, it was Europe which led to the end of her premiership only a few months after this particular speech. (Not surprisingly, Geoffrey Howe and Michael Heseltine, the two princpal hatchet men who brought about her downfall, have said very little since her death.) I am told by a reliable source that by the mid 1990s she had come round to a withdrawalist postion. She certainly gave full support to the "Maastricht Rebels" who defied John Major's government over the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, which turned ther EEC into the European Union, and stated that she "could never have signed that treaty."
Mrs Thatcher was unquestionably influential in the rise of centre-right euroscepticism which is still alive and kicking in her party, as well as, of course, in UKIP. The aversion to pooling our sovereignty runs deep within the British people, and this is a significant factor behind Britain's long-standing discomfort with the EU. It took a while for Mrs. Thatcher's euroscepticism to mature, but even in the early days of her premiership, the disagreements with Helmut Kohl were a sign of things to come. Love for her country ran deep within her soul.
And how right she has been proven some 20-25 years later! In Herr Kohl's own country, a group of academics and economists have formed a new party, Alternative für Deutschland which supports German withdrawal from the Eurozone. It has yet to hold its first party conference, but it is growing rapidly. 2,500 members have joined the party in the last two weeks alone. While AfD is not a withdrawalist party, the fact that a German party with a heavyweight intellectual leadership is challenging the fundamental principal of "Ever Closer Union" is most signficant.
Meanwhile, in Greece, there has been an even more significant development. Until recently, most of the Greek electorate kept its faith with the Euro, in spite of overwhelming evidnece that it was beggaring them. However, a new party, EPAM, or the United People's Front, has been formed which advocates not only withdrawal from the Euro, but from the EU itself. Dimitris Kazakis, its founder and General Secretary, is no extremist like the thugs of the fascist Golden Dawn party or the Marxist Alexis Tsipras who leads SYRIZA. Like his German counterparts, he is a serious economist - a level-headed man who has recognised what Mrs T. saw twenty years earlier - that ever closer union spells disaster.
While I worked in Brussels, UKIP was contacted by withdrawalist parties from both Poland and Estonia. I don't know if these parties still exist or, if so, how well they are doing. They certainly didn't win any seats in the European Parliamentary elections in 2009. However, I think that the results of the 2014 elections will be rather different, and will show that it's not just in the UK that serious doubts are being raised about the whole European project. As far as the EU is concerend, Helmut Kohl and his federalist contemporaries like Jacques Delors stand for the past. It is Mrs Thatcher, even if is no longer with us, who symbolises the future.
That's one way of putting it. Perhaps it could best be said that she was ahead of the game in recognising even in the 1980s that something was very wrong with the direction that the European Union was taking. Admittedly, her European legacy is ambivalent. Her signing of the Single European Act in 1986 has blotted her copybook irrevocably in the eyes of some withdrawalists, and certainly in the earlier years of her premiership she supported the idea of a strong Europe - including the UK - as a counterweight to the Soviet Union. However, the arrival on the scene of the socialist President of the European Commission Jacques Delors opened her eyes to the real damage the European project was doing to British sovereignty. Her famous "No, No, No" speech was made in 1990, and there is no doubt that by then she was utterly opposed to the single currency or to any further extension of powers of the European Commission. Indeed, it was Europe which led to the end of her premiership only a few months after this particular speech. (Not surprisingly, Geoffrey Howe and Michael Heseltine, the two princpal hatchet men who brought about her downfall, have said very little since her death.) I am told by a reliable source that by the mid 1990s she had come round to a withdrawalist postion. She certainly gave full support to the "Maastricht Rebels" who defied John Major's government over the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, which turned ther EEC into the European Union, and stated that she "could never have signed that treaty."
Mrs Thatcher was unquestionably influential in the rise of centre-right euroscepticism which is still alive and kicking in her party, as well as, of course, in UKIP. The aversion to pooling our sovereignty runs deep within the British people, and this is a significant factor behind Britain's long-standing discomfort with the EU. It took a while for Mrs. Thatcher's euroscepticism to mature, but even in the early days of her premiership, the disagreements with Helmut Kohl were a sign of things to come. Love for her country ran deep within her soul.
And how right she has been proven some 20-25 years later! In Herr Kohl's own country, a group of academics and economists have formed a new party, Alternative für Deutschland which supports German withdrawal from the Eurozone. It has yet to hold its first party conference, but it is growing rapidly. 2,500 members have joined the party in the last two weeks alone. While AfD is not a withdrawalist party, the fact that a German party with a heavyweight intellectual leadership is challenging the fundamental principal of "Ever Closer Union" is most signficant.
Meanwhile, in Greece, there has been an even more significant development. Until recently, most of the Greek electorate kept its faith with the Euro, in spite of overwhelming evidnece that it was beggaring them. However, a new party, EPAM, or the United People's Front, has been formed which advocates not only withdrawal from the Euro, but from the EU itself. Dimitris Kazakis, its founder and General Secretary, is no extremist like the thugs of the fascist Golden Dawn party or the Marxist Alexis Tsipras who leads SYRIZA. Like his German counterparts, he is a serious economist - a level-headed man who has recognised what Mrs T. saw twenty years earlier - that ever closer union spells disaster.
While I worked in Brussels, UKIP was contacted by withdrawalist parties from both Poland and Estonia. I don't know if these parties still exist or, if so, how well they are doing. They certainly didn't win any seats in the European Parliamentary elections in 2009. However, I think that the results of the 2014 elections will be rather different, and will show that it's not just in the UK that serious doubts are being raised about the whole European project. As far as the EU is concerend, Helmut Kohl and his federalist contemporaries like Jacques Delors stand for the past. It is Mrs Thatcher, even if is no longer with us, who symbolises the future.