In a speech delivered by Margaret Thatcher in Bruges in 1988 she set out five principles for progress and liberty in Europe. Hindsight shows us how far today's EU has become removed from her vision.
Margaret Thatcher's historic speech delivered at Bruges, Belgium in September 1988.
Famously rejecting the centralized, unaccountable, federal Europe of Delors, Margaret Thatcher proposed instead a wider, decentralized, outward-looking, democratic Europe of independent, free-trading and cooperating nation states. She set out five principles for Liberty:
1. No suppression of nation states, but cooperation between free, independent nations, each with its own particular identity.
2. Practical solutions to problems, avoiding legislating morality, which we now know as political correctness: singling out and punishing dissent from the state ideology ('democracy', diversity and equality, against populism and Euro skepticism) which is moving us to a European version of the Soviet Union.
3. Free trade and deregulation, instead of the centralized corporatism and the crypto command economy which currently passes for economic policy in the EU.
4. No protectionism.
5. Defense through NATO. The recent answer seems to be a European 'military industrial complex', to compensate for ever tighter defense budgets. It seems a rather feeble cover up for an integrated defense force which is politically still 'a bridge too far'.
Tags: Globalism, Economy money & trade
Tags: Globalism, Economy money & trade
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