Handbag Hallucinations

It is always amusing to read those who seem to imagine that merely by having negotiated a rebate, Thatcher is somehow off the hook for having signed the Single European Act, and for having been an entirely compliant member of Heath's Cabinet before that.

She would have signed Maastricht, whatever she might have said from the comfort of retirement. She would have signed everything since, and more. She would have given up the rebate years ago, and dismissed with derision the latest in the line of always-tiny Tory rebellions on Europe. Massed ranks of Eurosceptical Tory MPs do not exist; there were only about twenty over Maastricht, and there may not even be half that many now.

The only possible opposition to this in the present context is from those who are opposing its context, the cuts. "How can you cut jobs and public services while doing this?" is the only pertinent question, and cannot be asked by those who are in favour of cutting jobs and public services.

But neither the fantasy "Thatcherite" media nor the pro-EU, pseudo-Left media will give that any more attention than they gave the three times more Labour MP s than Tories who voted against Maastricht, or the forty-odd Labour MPs who voted against the European Finance Bill when the Whip was withdrawn from half a dozen Tories for abstaining.