Will They Apologize to Margaret Thatcher?
As Peter Osborne correctly points out in the Daily Telegraph, Margaret Thatcher knew the single currency would devastate Europe.
Today, Margaret Thatcher’s autobiography, first published in 1993, reads like a prophecy. It shows how deeply and with what extraordinary wisdom she had examined Delors’ proposals for the single currency. Her overriding objection was not ill-considered or xenophobic, as subsequent critics have repeatedly claimed.
They were economic. Right back in 1990, Mrs Thatcher foresaw with painful clarity the devastation it was bound to cause. Her autobiography records how she warned John Major, her euro-friendly chancellor of the exchequer, that the single currency could not accommodate both industrial powerhouses such as Germany and smaller countries such as Greece. Germany, forecast Thatcher, would be phobic about inflation, while the euro would prove fatal to the poorer countries because it would “devastate their inefficient economies”.
It is as if, all those years ago, the British prime minister possessed a crystal ball that enabled her to foresee the catastrophic events of the past year or so in Ireland, Greece and Portugal. Indeed, it is one of the tragedies of European history that the world chose not to believe her. President Mitterrand of France and Chancellor Kohl of Germany dismissed her words of caution. And when Mrs Thatcher was driven from office in 1990, a crucial voice was lost, and a new consensus started to form in Britain in favour of the euro.
Osborne, apparently, has been trying to call the politicians who stood against her policies and for the single currency. "I wanted to ask them for an apology. Not one of them came back."
Why am I not surprised?
Baroness Thatcher has often been accused by her politically motivated enemies of callousness. But backers of the European project are today happy to countenance unlimited human suffering in their mission to enforce economic and monetary union. Mrs Thatcher knew this would be the result of their deranged plan, which is why she fought to stop it. Her last battle as prime minister could not have been fought in a greater or more compassionate cause.
Indeed. I suppose it is asking too much of human nature that the men who betrayed her admit now that they were wrong and she was right--no less that they stand up in public and apologize to her.
Everyone apart from them, however, now sees clearly who was on the right side of history.
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Oct '10
Re: Will They Apologize to Margaret Thatcher?
In lieu of an apology or even a nod of recognition, will the UK give Margaret Thatcher a state funeral? Rather than the measure of Margaret Thatcher, this will be the measure of Great Britain.
Re: Will They Apologize to Margaret Thatcher?
Wait a decade. Then all Britain will have shared her foresight, just as we all linked arms to break the Soviets…
Re: Will They Apologize to Margaret Thatcher?
I'm sure they will, but let's not think about that.
Oct '10
Re: Will They Apologize to Margaret Thatcher?
The European Union's currency crisis proves that a straightforward policy of just saying no - or in Thatcher's case, "no, no, no" - is the best approach to countering the irreducible complexity of metastasizing bureaucratic statism. This is an important lesson for the newly-elected Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives to learn. It is better to be the Party of No than the Party of Backbreaking, Sovereignty-Undermining Debt.
This episode would make for an appropriate additional chapter in a reprint edition of There is No Alternative.
Indeed, Margaret Thatcher still matters.
Edited on Nov 19, 2010 at 1:37amMay '10
Re: Will They Apologize to Margaret Thatcher?
Does anyone know if it's true that John O'Sullivan wrote at least a portion of Thatcher's book?
Re: Will They Apologize to Margaret Thatcher?
Yes, it is.
Oct '10
Re: Will They Apologize to Margaret Thatcher?
Does Margaret Thatcher matter to David Cameron? I cannot shake the notion that he is just a younger version of Edward Heath.
Jul '10
Re: Will They Apologize to Margaret Thatcher?
Claire, don't you think Mrs. Thatcher's monument here is the continuing existence of the pound? While Europe suffers from the disastrous euro experiment, her successors were too politically impotent to impose it upon Britain. Why was that? Did Major try? I can't remember, if I ever knew...
Oct '10
Re: Will They Apologize to Margaret Thatcher?
Claire,
I was an expat in London from 1972 to 1984 (ages 6 to 18). The contempt of Margaret Thatcher in Britain and from ignorant American leftists is astonishing. She saved Britain from an economic malaise unlike anything American's have witnessed since at least WWII. Given TUC control over the economy, I'm not sure that America, even in the depression, has ever strangled at the hands of overbearing authority the way Britain did in the seventies. The prosperity enjoyed by and sometimes credited to Tony Blair would not have been possible without Margaret Thatcher. That she knew the Euro was a fool's currency further evidences her higher plane of wisdom.
Thank you for patiently illustrating her greatness. The chronically stupid will never get it, but one must try. Otherwise, we are destined to be led by Barack Obamas.
Re: Will They Apologize to Margaret Thatcher?
Yes, and Britain can also thank former Chancellors Norman Lamont and Gordon Brown for keeping them out of that mess. (Here's a quick summary of what happened.)
Aug '10
Re: Will They Apologize to Margaret Thatcher?
You can only save a suicide so many times. England continues to climb out on the ledge when good sense isn't looking.
And ,as is the case often, someone in the crowd below bellows "Jump!" .
Are there any strong currencies in the world ? Are there any countries that honestly assess their state of affairs ?
Is the charade for the benefit of the actor/politicians or the backers/bankers or the audience/citizenry ?
Or like most plays, does it really matter what happens inside the theater to the people outside who don't give a hang ?
Oct '10
Re: Will They Apologize to Margaret Thatcher?
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
Osborne, apparently, has been trying to call the politicians who stood against her policies and for the single currency. "I wanted to ask them for an apology. Not one of them came back."
Baroness Thatcher will no more get an apology than Ronald Reagan did.
I miss their leadership of Western civilization dearly.
Edited on Nov 19, 2010 at 7:22amMay '10
Re: Will They Apologize to Margaret Thatcher?
The lesson for us here and now is to resist the clarion call to emulate the EU disaster and learn from those disastrous mistakes. Thanks to the dormant commerce clause, the US is one large free trade zone, with a common currency, but also with some profligate individual members (states) that behave in a manner that beggars the entire enterprise.
We have Greece (California), Portugal (NY), Ireland (NJ- the one state that is actually taking effective action). "Greece" and "Portugal" would love to get bail-outs from "Germany" (Texas? and others) and kick the can down the road.
No matter what people say about the consequences of letting our own Greece default, the alternative is worse. We can't change the currency and get some states to devalue, but we can permit or even require necessary austerity to begin.
Or maybe we could set up a new currency- used only for public employee pensions, and pay them in that special scrip?
Jul '10
Re: Will They Apologize to Margaret Thatcher?
Fantastic idea! They could all be copies of the money issued by the Continental Congress between 1776 and 1783.
Related to this, I wish I had $1 for every time Washington in his letters mentions the "emission of paper credit". Always sounds kind of nasty and kinky when he says it. Which, come to think of it, it is--given that he saw it as the betrayal of honor and reputation.
May '10
Re: Will They Apologize to Margaret Thatcher?
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
I find this the most important of the many reasons that Margaret Thatcher matters that you raise in your book, Claire.
To continue with these terribly mis-guided policies after they have been repeatedly discredited is deeply amoral. And to resist those who speak of "progress" but leave real misery in their wake is a great and moral cause, no matter how cold and "pragmatic" it appears.
Edited on Nov 19, 2010 at 12:45pmOct '10
Re: Will They Apologize to Margaret Thatcher?
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
As Peter Osborne correctly points out in the Daily Telegraph...
Huh. Monetary policy ideas are economic, and can be bad. Whodathunkit?