Did Thatcher really see the euro problem ?

[Crafty_]

Not sure this is the right place, but..

I read this today : http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/1000...

I was a bit too young / didn't give a stuff at the time. Was she really as savvy as the article suggests ?

[s2art]

Crafty_ said:

Not sure this is the right place, but..

I read this today : http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/1000...

I was a bit too young / didn't give a stuff at the time. Was she really as savvy as the article suggests ?

Probably,but she was advised my some smart men.

[-Pete-]

I admit to being totally wrong about the Euro, thank goodness for the sceptics!

The media and their political backers, and the shallow understanding of the masses, means it's not good for politicians to go against the tide, whatever their principles. A few good politicians from every side are prepared to question what everbody else has accepted as fact. We should be grateful that they exist.

[Puggit]

Any excuse:


Stick Maggie up yet another notch above any other politician.

[Somewhatfoolish]

Thatcher was the greatest Briton ever.

Such a shame she is senile. Were she not, I would appoint her PM in a heart beat.

[550Hep]

You know she might have been a green grocers daughter from the Midlands but there are many many a great person who came from humble roots... Did you hear the one about the Swiss Patent Clerk??

I will get utterly slammed for that by the lefties and others but ho hum....

[Jim the Sunderer]

She said it was all about a federal Europe by the back door, or something like that.

[Globulator]

article said:

Irishman Niall Fitzgerald, chairman of the industrial giant Unilever, forecast British economic obliteration outside the euro.

I don't think you had to be that smart to see the problems of the euro, since the Rothschilds started being bankers it's been known (and stated - it's _not_ a secret) that controlling the currency was far more important to a country than its laws.

Given the power and influence of the ECB/Bundesbank and the prize of offer (ownership of Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain and France) the obvious conclusion is that people supporting the euro where persuaded to do so by whatever means were necessary. Simple bribes of course - for a central bank - are completely free.

[Derek Smith]

She was right about the Euro but one wonders if her reasons were the ones attributed to her. I often think that she was not absolutely 100% dedicated to the EEC and the only question for her was whether she could make things more difficult for them.

She made many mistakes as well and being right in this instance should not blind you to her errors.

She was lucky in some ways, the situation often playing to her strengths. There are a few PMs who would have cocked up the Falklands. She played that superbly.

Poll tax, well that was about as good as privatising rail and buses. It needed a softer, more subtle touch, something that was not one of her strengths.

Half of my family thought Churchill the greatest PM ever whilst others, especially my maternal grandmother, thought him just a bit worse than the devil. The truth is he was good at some things and not so good at others, keeping soldiers alive came under the latter.

Wellington was one of our greatestt military leaders but probably one of our worst prime ministers.

Thatcher was a curate's egg.

[JagLover]

Crafty_ said:

Not sure this is the right place, but..

I read this today : http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/1000...

I was a bit too young / didn't give a stuff at the time. Was she really as savvy as the article suggests ?

An undergraduate in economics could see that the Euro was going to turn into a disater, as proposed. A currency union of such disparate economies with no large scale fiscal transfers was bound to end in disater when the first crises hit.

Of course many are already using the crises to call for EU wide taxes that go straight to the EU...

It was always about deepening poltical and economic union.

[KENZ]

JagLover said:

Crafty_ said:

Not sure this is the right place, but..

I read this today : http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/1000...

I was a bit too young / didn't give a stuff at the time. Was she really as savvy as the article suggests ?

An undergraduate in economics could see that the Euro was going to turn into a disater, as proposed. A currency union of such disparate economies with no large scale fiscal transfers was bound to end in disater when the first crises hit.

Of course many are already using the crises to call for EU wide taxes that go straight to the EU...

It was always about deepening poltical and economic union.

Agree I was some what surprised that these economies were not more in tune with another. Take for instance the retirement age in Greece being 52..whats that about. How can that be affordable..

[Globs]

JagLover said:

It was always about deepening poltical and economic union.

Specifically to create The Fourth Reich.

As planned out in 1944.
Yes it is a conspiracy. Look, it's documented.
Yes, that's where the idea and the money comes from.
Yes, Germany via the ECB does almost own most of europe now.
Yes, the unelected EU elite does control most of europe now.

What we are seeing now with Ireland etc. is the 'End Game', to bring total German ownership and control by 2012. By 'German' of course I don't mean the average german who does like the EU anymore than we do, I mean those germans and their followers who started out in 1944 to do what they have almost done.

Before you all wade in bleating that I'm wrong, take a read of that link, and take a long hard look at the way the EU empire is panning out, and judge for yourself.

It's better than the Panzers, but it's still a foreign takeover, the goal is the same, just the means differ.

[spikeyhead]

I knew one of Thatchers advisers, lovely bloke, stunningly articulate mind and capable of drinking almost anyone under the table, though I don't think I ever saw him drunk.

He was very clear on this, unless the economic policies of ever country involved were managed in harmony, the Euro would eventually fail.

[Mermaid]

Globs said:

It's better than the Panzers, but it's still a foreign takeover, the goal is the same, just the means differ.

It's the German cars we have been buying..

We will at some stage regret all the Chinese stuff we are lapping up.

[theironduke]

20 years tomorrow she was ousted...

[TimJMS]

KENZ said:

Agree I was some what surprised that these economies were not more in tune with another. Take for instance the retirement age in Greece being 52..whats that about. How can that be affordable..

And the fact that income tax evasion is still the Greek national sport...

[Pommygranite]

Puggit said:

Any excuse:


Stick Maggie up yet another notch above any other politician.

Telling a Frenchman to stick his ECU's just sounds like sensible auto electric engineering to me...

[ajcj]

Economics 101, she's not a visionary in that respect. If you do not allow your currency to flex, the only thing you can do to improve competitiveness in the international economy is reduce your costs of production. What this means in practice is unemployment rises to the point that wage rates fall, and your goods become cheaper. The flaw in the scheme is political: the vision was that people could move freely across Europe so unemployment wouldn't collect in any one country (so the southern Italians could move to Germany, providing cheaper labour), but of course they don't, and politicians would never have the balls to run social policy in line with external economic policy like that.

[Crafty_]

I just found it interesting that she was so sure it would all end in tears but ended up being subdued by other factions in the party and was unable to gain support.
Far from the iron lady at that point..

[Globs]

Crafty_ said:

I just found it interesting that she was so sure it would all end in tears but ended up being subdued by other factions in the party and was unable to gain support.
Far from the iron lady at that point..

If she really believed then it makes her actions look very strange indeed. I found this on the Telegraph that says it better than I ever could:

telegraph_comment said:

who was Prime Minister when the Queen signed the Single European Act for example? I don't even recall there being much public debate during the committee stages, everyone in Cabinet and a huge Commons majority in Parliament put that through and we were treated to 7 years of harmonisation ("Get ready for 1992") from aspects of which we have never recovered 18 years later.

And who was Prime Minister when the UK joined the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a policy that went through Cabinet "on the nod" according to one secretary of state at the time i.e with no Cabinet opposition whatsoever? If you recall, actually joining the ERM occurred one month before the Lady was ousted........

Has everyone forgotten about pegging the Deutschmark for example? And all that implied for preparing to join the single currency?

What I don't get is that the Euro (ERM2) emerged at the start of 1999, 8 years and a bit after Mrs T had been ousted; but she had already agreed to join the UK to its predecessor organisation (ERM1) before she left office; and she had a history contrary to the popular perception of the day and since of strengthening euro institutions in this country (admittedly after exhausting the contrarian position to its limits which must have driven Howe,Clarke, Heseltine and Hurd nuts).

So exactly when was Mrs T's conversion to being anti-Euro so evident in order to be effective? By process of elimination, actually, when she was out of office it seems and couldn't be so effective at all. The UK stayed out of the Euro because it's first attempt to join screwed up! So, I fear that this article's praise of Mrs T's opposition to the Euro as a force for good when she was PM is suspect tosh.