What would Margaret Thatcher be doing about Europe? - Lord Renwick of Clifton, KCMG December 2013
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What would Margaret Thatcher be
doing about Europe?
Lord Renwick of Clifton, KCMG
December 2013 1
This report is published by New Direction – The Foundation for European Reform.
New Direction aims to promote conservative values and a reformist approach, and help shift
the EU onto a different course – away from the current orthodoxy of ‘ever closer union’ and
centralised bureaucratic governance onto a path that promotes the freedom, prosperity and
security of our nations: encouraging free markets, free enterprise, lower taxes and smaller
government.
The views expressed in New Direction’s reports are those of the authors and do not
necessary reflect the views of all members of New Direction.
Lord Renwick of Clifton KCMG, was one of Margaret Thatcher’s senior foreign policy
advisers during some of the most notable events of her time in office including the single
market negotiations and “getting our money back” from the European Community, the Falklands War,
He served as British Ambassador to South Africa from 1987
and the release of Nelson Mandela.
to 1991 and British Ambassador to the United States from 1991 to 1995. He was
subsequently elevated to the House of Lords.
His book, “A Journey with Margaret Thatcher: Foreign Policy under the Iron Lady,” was published
earlier this year.
December 2013
New Direction receives funding from the European Parliament and is also required to raise a
proportion of its funds from additional sources. The views expressed in this publication do not
necessarily reflect those of the European Parliament.
Printed in Belgium
ISBN 978-2-87555-082-8
Publisher and copyright holder:
New Direction Foundation
Rue d'Arlon 40, 1000 Brussels, Belgium
Phone: +32 2 808 7847
Email: contact@newdirectionfoundation.org
www.newdirectionfoundation.org
2Contents
In Brief ........................................................................................................................................ 4
Foreword .................................................................................................................................... 6
What would Margaret Thatcher be doing about Europe today? .............................................. 7
Re-patriating Human Rights ....................................................................................................... 8
Non Discrimination..................................................................................................................... 8
Europe isn’t working .................................................................................................................. 9
De-Regulation ........................................................................................................................... 12
Benefits Migration .................................................................................................................... 12
Energy Costs ............................................................................................................................. 13
The CBI...................................................................................................................................... 13
Is the EU capable of reform? .................................................................................................... 14
3In Brief
In Lord Renwick’s view, Margaret Thatcher would:
Withdraw the United Kingdom from the European Convention on Human Rights and
re-patriate human rights legislation on the grounds that, having invented human
rights, Britain does not need a group of judges in Strasbourg to tell us how to apply
them.
Campaign on the theme that “Europe isn’t working”, and is failing a whole generation
of young job seekers, she would exploit the Europe-wide groundswell of resistance to
yet further over-regulation from Brussels and increasingly intrusive interventions by
the EU authorities in the affairs of member countries to seek to achieve a new
balance of powers between the EU and member states.
Seek to arrest and reverse the tidal wave of new regulation emanating from Brussels
by insisting that a sunset clause should apply to all new and existing EU regulation
which would be subject to periodic review and could not be carried forward without
a full justification of costs and benefits.
Propose that a blanket exemption should apply to small and medium enterprises,
which are the main generators of growth and employment in the EU, save in respect
of fundamental health, safety and environmental requirements.
Insist on reform of all directives impeding job creation Europe-wide.
In the new two-tier Europe that has resulted from the development of the eurozone,
she would want precise guarantees against discrimination by the eurozone vis-a-vis
other EU members.
State he view that, in the absence of reforms of this kind, Europe will remain for the
foreseeable future the highest cost and lowest growth economic region in the world.
She would be conscious that the process of leaving the EU would create serious
economic uncertainty, affecting inward investment, and would diminish Britain’s
influence in the world. She would consider, however, that while the attractions are
obvious for the UK to remain in a reformed EU, they are far less obvious if it remains
unreformed.
In pursuit of a reform agenda, she would expect to receive support from the German
Chancellor, from the Dutch and Swedish governments and from many in eastern
Europe.
She would commission a review of energy policy to ensure pursuit of the goal of
reducing emissions in an affordable manner and one which does not further destroy
Europe’s competitiveness vis-a-vis the US, China and India. She regarded on-shore
wind farms as an uneconomic environmental disaster.
She would pursue these objectives with sufficiently high energy to marginalise UKIP
in the European and UK elections until the outcome of the reform effort was known.
She would regard deferring this effort until after the next election as bound to fail,
both domestically and in Europe.
Furthermore,
4 Angela Merkel has declared that: “An economy that is no longer competitive will
deny people prosperity. It is wrong to assume any longer that Europe is regarded as a
model for others”.
Robert Zoellick, as head of the World Bank, stated that “Europe’s leaders have failed
to comprehend just how rapidly Europe’s stature is seen as diminishing in the rest of
the world”.
The President of the Commission has declared that: “We must remove unnecessary
burdens on business in order to unleash jobs and growth...... not everything needs a
European solution. Europe must focus on where it can add most value and not
meddle elsewhere”. Yet the Commission currently is proposing a new spate of
regulation, including fifty new directives in the financial sector alone.
The Governor of the Bank of France has denounced the Commission’s proposed
Financial Transaction Tax as likely “to trigger a massive off-shoring of jobs and so
damage the economy as a whole”.
5Foreword
Baroness Thatcher, who died earlier this year, was New Direction’s Founding Patron. Our
launch in 2010 was probably her final major public appearance. She transformed Britain and
our place in the world and restored pride to the British people. Driving through a series of
radical and imaginative reforms, her government not only improved the prosperity and
prospects of millions, but inspired a generation to think the unthinkable about public policy.
New Direction is but a minor heir to that tradition.
Margaret Thatcher also re-energised British foreign policy. The recapture of the Falklands in
1982 galvanised British self-confidence and prestige. Perhaps even more importantly, her
strong convictions on the principles of individual liberty, market economics and national self-
determination helped bring the Cold War to its conclusion. These inspired too her approach
to Europe. Mrs Thatcher strongly supported free trade and her government signed the Single
European Act on that basis. But she maintained the supremacy of our nations in her justified
suspicion of a unified single currency, her opposition to ‘ever closer union’ and her insistence
on fair treatment for Britain in its budgetary contribution.
Robin Renwick, Lord Renwick of Clifton, was one of her key foreign policy advisers. As a
senior diplomat, he worked at the highest level on some of the great issues of the day: not
just the European negotiations and the Falklands war, but the release of Nelson Mandela
and the seizing of an opportunity for dramatic change in the Soviet Union. His book A
Journey with Margaret Thatcher was released this year, and on 21st November he addressed
a New Direction event hosted by Bloomberg at their London Headquarters on the
hypothetical subject of “What Margaret Thatcher would be doing about Europe today”. I feel
sure she would have appreciated the fact that this was precisely the location for David
Cameron’s ground-breaking speech on Europe on 23 January.
This short paper is based on the contents of Lord Renwick’s speech. It provides a clear
analysis of the faults and potential of the European Union, with a reasoned discussion of
where Britain’s European interests lie and what is the best approach for the EU, not just for
Britain but for all its member states. Margaret Thatcher would have been gratified that
David Cameron’s approach to reforming the EU is in line with her own thoughts – she would
have wanted more publicly visible energy devoted to this cause in order to win the political
battle at home.
Geoffrey Van Orden
President of New Direction
December 2013
6What would Margaret Thatcher be doing about Europe
today?
“ Earlier this year I published a book entitled “A Journey with Margaret Thatcher”
based on my own experience of working very closely with her as Prime Minister, including in
some of the key European negotiations. It is true that she had a famously fraught
relationship with some of the other European leaders. In the course of a discussion about
the Common Fisheries Policy the Prime Minister, who had studied her brief in inexhaustible
detail and firmly believed that she knew exactly how many fish species were swimming
around in the North Sea, exclaimed to Helmut Schmidt: “The trouble, Helmut, is that you
don’t know anything about fish!” According to my German colleagues Helmut Schmidt, on
returning to his delegation office, responded by kicking the furniture. When in my presence,
she told the Italian Prime Minister Andreotti that she was trained as a chemist, he muttered
in Italian that he would never go to her for a prescription: he would be afraid that she might
poison him!
Yet her achievements in Europe were greater than most of her predecessors. Above all, she
succeeded in securing a permanent correction of the British budgetary contribution, without
which we would be unlikely still to be members of the EU today as the British electorate
would not have put up indefinitely with a manifestly unfair budgetary burden. Having played
a part in that negotiation, I can assure you that this outcome would not have been achieved
without her implacable determination. The Single European Act – a negotiation in which I
also was involved - opened up European competition in the area of Britain’s greatest
strength, that is to say in services.
But she was opposed to Britain joining the Exchange Rate Mechanism because, as a
convinced disciple of Adam Smith, she did not believe in fixed currencies and thought it
extremely unwise to seek to link Sterling to the Deutschmark, a view in which she proved to
be correct. She also was prophetic about the economic consequences of the euro,
forecasting with precision that a currency union in the absence of a political union and major
transfer payments would impose immense hardship on the weaker member states and
inevitably would result in a eurozone critically dependent on Germany. In a last great
parliamentary performance, she denounced the “conveyor belt to federalism”, denounced
as scare-mongering at the time. But that is exactly what all applicants and members of the
eurozone are being asked to sign up for today. She tended to think towards the end of her
life that we would be “better off out”.
If, however, she were installed again as Prime Minister today, what precisely would she be
likely to seek to do?
7She would not accept the view that Britain could not survive and prosper outside the EU.
That would depend on the policies successive British governments then pursued. It would,
however, be totally uncharacteristic of her to head straight for the exit without first making
a huge further effort with other like-minded European leaders to see if we could not achieve
a more user-friendly and less intrusive and interventionist European system, only then
deciding whether enough had been achieved to render continued membership worthwhile.
For this was a lady who always did her homework, often more intensively than many of her
ministers. She would be aware that any country that gives notice under Article 50 of the
treaties of an intention to the leave the EU is entering a one way street to the exit. It is not
possible then to retrace one’s steps. A two year period is allowed to negotiate a new
agreement with the EU, but the terms of that agreement will be decided by qualified
majority voting of the remaining EU member states, excluding the departing member.
Of course it would appear to be clearly in the interest of EU members to agree a free trade
area in non-agricultural trade with the departing UK, as the EU has a large favourable
balance of trade with Britain. If the agreement negotiated with the EU were unsatisfactory,
it would still be possible for Britain to use the World Trade Organisation mechanisms to seek
to pursue free trade agreements anyway. Whatever the ultimate outcome, the result would
be a period of significant economic uncertainty about the consequences of leaving, with
potentially prejudicial effects on inward investment.
Re-patriating Human Rights
What then, precisely, would she set about doing? I would make the safe prediction that, to
show that she meant business, her first step would be to withdraw Britain from the
European Convention on Human Rights. She would do so on the basis that, in her opinion,
having invented human rights, Britain does not need a panel of judges in Strasbourg to tell
us how to implement them. This would be accompanied by a new Human Rights Act re-
patriating jurisdiction over human rights to the Supreme Court in Britain. She would expect
such a measure to have wide public support, given the effect membership of the European
Convention and actual or anticipated judgements under it have had on our ability to deport
terrorist suspects and illegal immigrants convicted of major crimes. As the Convention has a
separate legal basis, this would be able to be done without affecting Britain’s position under
the EU treaties. In any event, she would never have accepted that matters affecting national
security should be decided in Strasbourg.
Non Discrimination
The development of the eurozone has settled for the foreseeable future the question of
whether Britain will be “at the heart of Europe”. Clearly, we are not going to be. There is no
8appetite for us to join the monetary union, for all the reasons she gave at the time. We will
be part of the outer ring of member states. So the first and fundamental issue she would
seek to address, as the Government has been trying to do, would be to seek guarantees that
the member states of the eurozone would not seek to discriminate against members of the
EU outside it, particularly as, under the current voting rules, eurozone members could, by a
qualified majority, outvote the other member states. If the eurozone proceeded to do so,
and if the European Court of Justice then ruled in favour of the euro as against the Common
Market, it would become extremely unattractive for Britain to remain a member of the
Union, however uncertain the consequences of leaving.
Europe isn’t working
Margaret Thatcher won the 1979 election with the slogan: “Britain isn’t working”. The
campaign she would seek to wage today would be based on the proposition that “Europe
isn’t working”. Robert Zoellick, as outgoing President of the World Bank, observed that
Europe’s leaders have failed to comprehend just how rapidly Europe’s stature is seen as
diminishing in the rest of the world. Europe, he added, is looked upon as an example of a
continent in deep trouble. There are 29 million unemployed in the EU, the majority of them
young people with, in many member states, little prospect of finding employment. Europe,
as it at present operates, is simply failing this whole generation of young people.
Margaret Thatcher would not oppose the determination of Angela Merkel to seek to impose
much greater discipline on the members of the eurozone. She would regard that as a
necessary condition for its survival, provided this did not result in discrimination against non-
eurozone members. She would, however, be very sceptical that the eurozone can be made
to work in the longer term without movement towards a transfer union to which Germany,
understandably, has been opposed.
She would instead seek to make common cause with the German Chancellor, who has been
sounding like the Thatcher of our era in insisting that indebtedness cannot be cured by more
debt and growth cannot be achieved by ever more by Government spending, and with the
Dutch and Swedish Prime Ministers and with some of the east Europeans in seeking to
launch a veritable crusade against what she regarded as the absolute bane of the European
Union, namely business and enterprise being stifled over-regulation.
Angela Merkel has stated that Europe’s ability to withstand the challenge of globalisation
will depend on spending more on research and education and overhauling its tax and labour
markets to restore competitiveness. Europe, she points out, which accounts for seven per
cent of the world’s population, currently is financing fifty per cent of global social spending.
These challenges are more severe with an ageing population. “An economy that is no longer
9competitive will deny people prosperity. It is wrong to assume any longer that Europe is
regarded as a model for others”. She has been seeking to persuade the Commission and the
other member states to commit to “binding contracts for competitiveness and growth”.
Margaret Thatcher would not fail to notice that there is in many member states increasingly
strong resistance to what is felt to be the desire from Brussels to regulate everything,
whether or not this needs to be done at the European level, and to keep interfering in what
Douglas Hurd described as the “nooks and crannies of British life”. This has produced a
populist reaction in this country in the form of the UK Independence Party and, even more
so, in France with the emergence of Marine le Pen and the National Front as a major political
force. Both parties are likely to make major gains in the next European elections. By far the
most popular figure on the left in France today is the Interior Minister, Monsieur Valls, who
has enhanced his own future Presidential ambitions by fighting with the European
Commission over the treatment of the Romas in France.
The President of the Commission, Mr Barroso, has himself acknowledged the need for de-
regulation and that “to be more effective, the EU needs public support......in particular we
must remove unnecessary burdens on business in order to unleash jobs and growth. ...We
are making sure European regulations do not overshoot the mark, that necessary rules are
as lean and clear as possible and that unnecessary or unbalanced legislation is avoided....not
everything needs a European solution. Europe must focus on where it can add most value
and not meddle elsewhere”.
If the EU institutions actually lived up to what the outgoing President of the Commission has
said, we would all be greatly reassured. Unfortunately, the majority of the regulations that
have been withdrawn have been replaced by new regulations and the amount of European
law directly applicable in the United Kingdom currently runs to 120,000 pages. The
Commission itself estimates the EU-wide burden on business resulting from EU regulations
at around £80 billion – widely regarded as an underestimate and which takes no account of
the further wave of regulations now proposed. The Commission has a very necessary job to
do in fighting against distortions of trade within the EU and in representing us all in external
trade negotiations, including pursuit of the goal of a free trade agreement with the US,
which Margaret Thatcher advocated twenty five years ago. The Commission, however,
despite Mr Barroso’s remarks, continues systematically to extend its powers and those of
“Europe” at the expense of national governments and Parliaments by a continuing spate of
new regulations, fifty of which currently are pending in the financial services sector alone.
The Financial Transactions Tax, in the form and at the level at which it was proposed by the
Commission, would wipe out entirely the profits of the international banks operating in the
European Union. The Council Legal Service has criticised the proposed extra-territorial reach
of the tax. The Governor of the Bank of France stated recently that “The Commission’s draft
10is a non starter and needs to be totally revised......I do not believe it was ever the intention
of the French Government to do something that would trigger the destruction of entire
sections of the French financial industry, trigger a massive off-shoring of jobs and so damage
the economy as a whole”. The Commission itself estimated that it would reduce derivatives
trading in the EU by two thirds. Of course we must all hope and indeed expect that some
kind of sanity will in the end prevail. Nevertheless, we may well end up with a financial
transactions tax which will impose an additional burden on the European financial services
industry.
Similar objections apply to the proposed bonus cap. Of course bonuses should not be paid in
ways that encourage excessive risk taking. Instead of seeking to deal with this by ensuring
that bonus payments for the most part are deferred for several years, can be clawed back
and must be subject to approval by shareholders, as many of the banks themselves are
doing, the Commission’s proposal actually would actually add to the element of risk in the
banks by forcing them to increase fixed as against variable remuneration.
The Commission also has infuriated the German government by making the extraordinary
proposal that it, rather than the European Central Bank, should act as the resolution
authority for failed banks within the planned European banking union.
It is not only in the financial services sector that these excesses are visible for all to see. The
Times recently publicised an interesting plan from Brussels to harmonise standards for toilet
flushing across the European Union! Another absurdity was the plan to require all the
restaurants in Europe to cease serving olive oil in saucers and require them instead to do so
in separately packaged units. Sir James Dyson has felt obliged to bring a legal action against
the Commission’s attempts to harmonise vacuum cleaners. In the period in which I was
working for Margaret Thatcher, I had to fend off a plan to harmonise the British sausage. I
was able to do so by sending to Brussels a video tape of the episode in “Yes, Minister” in
which Jim Hacker became Prime Minister by defending the UK sausage. I also had to help to
nip in the bud a suggestion that in the UK pint glasses should be replaced by half litre
glasses!
It is difficult for anyone in Brussels to accept that national authorities may be just as
effective, or more so, as regulators. There is an irresistible urge towards centralisation and
hyper regulation which is going to have to be arrested and reversed if Europe is not to
become a permanently low growth and enterprise unfriendly economic zone. If, in an
alliance with other member states, we were able to achieve a fundamental shift towards less
regulation and real acceptance of what our German colleagues call subsidiarity, that would
do a vast amount to reduce the increasing antipathy to the EU institutions which currently is
felt not only in Britain but Europe wide.
11De-Regulation
Accepting how unpopular this system has become, the Commission has more or less
accepted the principle that for each new regulation adopted, an existing one should be
withdrawn. But that does not deal with the huge burden imposed on enterprises across the
EU by the existing 120,000 pages of legislation. The solution to this problem should be the
adoption of a sunset clause for both new and existing EU regulations, requiring them to be
reviewed after, say, five years with an impact assessment as to how cost-effective or
worthwhile they have turned out to be. Another obvious reform would be greatly to
increase the exemption of small to medium business Europe wide from the scope of many of
these regulations. For the SMEs are the main drivers of economic growth and employment
creation throughout Europe and have suffered drastically and disproportionately from the
regulatory burdens now currently imposed upon them.
Benefits Migration
There are other areas in which the Commission can show an extraordinary insensitivity
towards the member states. The migration of people wanting to work in other EU countries
is actually an economic benefit of the EU. Britain, however, has arguably the most generous
benefits system in Europe, particularly given that, unlike in Germany and some other
member states, it is non-contributory. The National Health Service is unique in being free at
the point of access. Self-evidently it is more attractive to be unemployed in Britain or a
dependent qualifying for benefits here than for instance in the Balkans. The Commission’s
own internal report indicated that the number of job-seeking EU migrants to the UK
increased by over seventy per cent between 2008 and 2011 and that the number of EU
migrants coming to the UK “without a job awaiting them has been increasing”. Yet its
response has been to deny the existence of the problem and to threaten to take the
government to the European Court of Justice if we do not make the full range of benefits
available immediately to all new arrivals in Britain from the EU irrespective of any residence
or other requirements.
The head of internal audit at the Commission meanwhile has reported a further €6 billion of
mis-spending last year, with the Court of Auditors certifying that €139 billion were
disbursed, but it “does not give assurances that these payments were legal and regular”.
So the case for reform is unanswerable. Of course Margaret Thatcher, if in office today,
would like to see treaty changes to entrench a reformed system and prevent further major
transfers of sovereignty from member states of the EU not in the eurozone. In any event, we
need to recognise that the British Parliament is extremely unlikely to be able again, any time
soon, to agree to any further transfers of sovereignty of the kind incorporated in the Lisbon
Treaty, as support for this is simply lacking nationwide. The question is whether it will prove
12possible in the interest of all member states to achieve the kind of structural reforms I have
been outlining as the only way of preventing Europe continuing to fall dramatically behind
the United States and Asia in competitive terms.
Energy Costs
Margaret Thatcher would not have failed to notice that a major cause of Europe’s increasing
decline in competitiveness has been the adoption of extremely ambitious carbon reduction
targets and the subsidisation of extremely expensive renewable sources of energy. She
regarded on-shore wind farms as an un-economic environmental disaster. Ironically,
emissions have been falling faster in the United States, which has not signed the Kyoto
Protocol, than in the EU. India and China, though both are trying to reduce emissions to
some degree, most certainly are not going to commit to anything like the same targets as
the EU. In this respect, we are ill placed to complain about EU policies since
Mr Milliband, as Climate Change Secretary, committed us to ever more expensive subsidies,
directly contributing to the current outcry about energy prices, a policy continued by his
successors. As a result, this country is facing the very real possibility of blackouts within the
next few years, at which point we will see the entire political class scurrying to disclaim
responsibility for the resultant fiasco. Margaret Thatcher would commission a review of
energy policy on the grounds that there will have to be some adjustment between the
worthwhile objective of seeking to reduce emissions, high costs and high subsidies and
economic reality.
The CBI
The CBI recently published a report stating that eighty per cent of businesses in Britain want
the country to remain a member of a reformed European Union. Margaret Thatcher would
recall that the CBI were overwhelming in favour of joining the Exchange Rate Mechanism
and, subsequently, the euro, with its Director General stating: “There is no case in favour of
wait and see... to stay out now would be a terrible mistake”. The CBI claims that each British
family is £3.000 per annum better off because we are in the EU. No statistic or estimate of
this kind by either of the camps in this dispute is of any real value at all, as it depends on the
assumptions on the basis of which it is calculated. When Mr Nick Clegg claimed that three
million British jobs depended on Britain staying in the EU, Professor Iain Begg of the LSE in
response said that any study carried out objectively would be bound to conclude that the
costs could not be calculated accurately and that the direct economic benefits or dis-
benefits were likely to be relatively limited. The CBI nevertheless is making a serious point,
namely that the majority of British businessmen would indeed prefer us to remain within the
EU provided the system can be reformed.
13I have based these opinions on my own experience of Margaret Thatcher which was that,
although a political leader with very firm principles and determination to stick to them, she
also was a realist. Britain cannot change the EU on its own and nor can we hope to secure a
raft of exemptions just for us. We have to build alliances in Europe and seek to work with
others to re-fashion the system which today is failing to deliver growth and prosperity for
the people it is supposed to benefit. Unless substantial reforms can be achieved, she would
regard the chances of retaining adequate public support for membership as ebbing away.
She would, however, accept that while Britain most certainly would survive outside the EU,
and we would be well rid of a host of burdensome regulations, our influence in the world
and in Europe, would be very much diminished.
She would feel that the EU would be significantly worse off without Britain, which remains
the second largest contributor to the EU budget, with our net contribution currently
standing at £10.5 billion or 0.7% of GDP, and with which the EU has a very favourable
balance of trade, and that our departure would be liable to tip the balance decisively in
favour of the protectionist forces that will seek, for instance, to ensure that the EU/US trade
negotiations deliver little more than a damp squib. But she would understand that our
friends in the wider world, in Asia and the US, have depended on us, Germany and the
northern members states to keep Europe outward looking and that our influence in, for
instance, the US would be diminished if we no longer had any in Europe. She also accepted
the positive role membership of the EU has played in helping to consolidate democracy first
in Greece, Portugal and Spain and, since then, in eastern Europe – goals which she strongly
supported.
Is the EU capable of reform?
The unanswered question in her mind would be whether the EU will prove to be capable of
reform and of the sort of change of direction the President of the Commission now appears
to be advocating. That is a question on which she would want to reserve judgement until she
had succeeded or failed in achieving reforms that could render membership more attractive
to us and provide a basis for Europe to re-gain competiveness vis-a-vis the US and Asia and
to encourage rather than discouraging enterprise and employment creation EU-wide and
avoid the slow motion strangulation that in her view would result from another tidal wave of
regulations from Brussels.
Those who contend that Britain has no option but to remain a member of the EU at any cost,
irrespective of its ability to reform itself, need to bear in mind that on current predictions,
with the possible exception of Japan, for the next two decades the EU will be the highest
cost and lowest growth economic region world-wide.
The Government deserves full credit, which it is now receiving, for reducing the
catastrophically high budget deficit which it inherited from its predecessor and in starting to
14get the British economy moving again. In his speech on 23 January 2013 the British Prime
Minister set out a clear EU reform agenda and the Government has achieved some successes
notably, for the first time, in reducing the EU budget, and the Chancellor’s success in
insisting that any eurozone reforms affecting them must be approved also by non-eurozone
members. Pending the outcome on the studies on competences, however, it has not yet
sought to wage this campaign for reform with anything like the same levels of energy and
determination Margaret Thatcher would have displayed with a view to marginalising UKIP in
both the European and general elections until the outcome of her campaign was known. She
would hope that, one year after the Prime Minister’s statement, the Government will start
to mount a sustained high profile effort to seek to achieve the reforms he was proposing and
to mobilise support across Europe for the changes that will be needed to return the EU to its
original goals of enhancing growth, employment and prosperity.
There has never been a period in which there was more dissatisfaction in other member
states with the way the system is operating than now. Support for change does exist Europe-
wide and the outgoing President of the Commission himself has acknowledged the need for
changes of the kind proposed. The effort to achieve reform cannot be delayed until after the
UK General Election and any attempt to do so would result in failure both domestically and
in Europe. For if this opportunity is not seized soon, she would be concerned that, despite its
achievements over the budget deficit and the economy, the Government could risk a fiasco
in the European elections and find it difficult to re-gain enough ground to do much better
thereafter.
It sometimes seems to be forgotten of Margaret Thatcher that she did succeed in winning
three elections. She was in fact quite good at it and I think we all should hope that the
Government will display the same energy she would have done in pursuit of these
worthwhile goals.
”
15December 2013 © 2013 New Direction – The Foundation for European Reform Publisher and copyright holder: New Direction – The Foundation for European Reform Rue d’Arlon 40 1000 Brussels, Belgium Telephone: +32 2 808 7847 contact@newdirectionfoundation.org
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