William Hague thinks that an economically patriotic friend of agriculture, manufacturing and small business, who wants to regulate the City and compel it to pay some tax - in a word, a Gaullist - will go down badly in Britain.
He might consider consulting the Turnip Taliban - the British Gaullists - of, say, the Richmond division of North Yorkshire.
I am not sure as to the specific event at which it might occur, but might Michel Barnier be the man to deliver to the TTs a speech as epoch-making as that of Jacques Delors to the TUC in 1988?
Better yet, might he be the man who rallies the TTs, and with them the TUCs, from one end of the EU to the other, against the Eurofederalist project's hostility to agriculture, to manufacturing, to small business, to organised labour and its achievements, and to the regulation and taxation of City Boys and their ilk, again from one end of the EU to the other?
It's just a pity that he has to be put in charge of Thatcher's wretched Single Market in order to do it.
No wonder that Hague, a devout Thatcherite and a Cabinet Minister at the time of Maastricht, doesn't like him.
The problem is that he is a federalist who wishes to empower the EU. The Old Labour Party which you stand for would never have approved. Remember Gaitskell and the end of 1000 years of history?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that he really is. When Gaullists say Europe, they mean France. They are against anything that is againt French interests, and why shouldn't they be? Same with the French generally. That's why no Frenchman has ever been given the Single Market portfolio. Until now.
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