Just What We All Need

The European edition of The Economist currently features a front page photograph of Margaret Thatcher with the legend "What France Needs". What, the Single European Act, the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Exchange Rate Mechanism, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, the replacement of O-levels with GCSEs, the destruction of the stockades of working-class male employment (and thus of paternal authority, especially over teenage boys, in those communities), the misdefinition of liberty as the "freedom" to do absolutely anything one pleases, and the maxims that "greed is good" and that "there is no such thing as society" (by definition including the society that is the family, and the society that is the nation)? Is that what France needs?

If anything it is Britain that needs a de Gaulle, who stood up for France against German occupation, Soviet infiltration, American domination, and the anti-French unbalancing of the EEC through British admission. He was right on all four counts. We need someone like that, who will stand up for Britain against all comers. Thatcher was no more such a figure than Blair is, or than Cameron would be.