The Farage coup
The true leader of today’s Tory Party has never even won a parliamentary seat
OPINIONS
Andrew Adonis and Will Hutton
Purple reign: he’s still in charge
© WENN LTD / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
It was “common sense” for Britain to stay in Europe, Margaret Thatcher said, in the 1975 referendum campaign. “It seems to me,” she said, “to display an amazing lack of self-confidence in Britain… to think that, when no other nation in the Community has lost its national character, Britain in some way will.”
How ironic that she would eventually be one of the two politicians who, in the face of a failure of nerve by pro-Europeans, would put Britain on the path to Brexit. But at this stage she was “economic right,” not “nationalist right”; hence she threw herself behind creating the single market.
She turned in 1988. The catalyst was Jacques Delors, the European Commission President who was pioneering a “social Europe,” with new employment rights.