The EU: From Thatcher to Cameron

Anna Sonny, 12 April 2013

The death of Margaret Thatcher this week has brought on a plethora of tributes and articles about how her staunch policies drastically changed the landscape of British politics. Her premiership, from 1979-1990, saw vast changes in Britain’s economic policy, the curtailing of trade union power and the reduction of state intervention in the lives of British citizens.

But during Thatcher’s time in power, the diminishing of the state’s role domestically did not reflect what was going on at the European level. Thatcher’s desire for a strong, sovereign Britain clashed with other European leaders’ designs for ever closer political union and this tension in Britain’s relations with the EU still remains 30 years on; Britain has always been at odds between a desire to integrate (mostly with regard to free market policies) on one hand and determination to retain sovereignty in decision-making on the other.

While Thatcher’s response to closer political union in her House of Commons speech in October 1990 was ‘No! No! No!’, the European scene in which David Cameron is participating has expanded – there are more players, which means more voices and less bargaining power for Britain. He cannot afford flat out refusal and in his constant attempts to find a mid-way point between isolation and integration, he has often been accused by other European leaders of cherry picking EU policies that benefit Britain and treating the Union like an ‘à la carte menu’.

But not only must Cameron find middle ground for Britain’s relationship with Europe, he must also find it for his own party’s stance on the issue. The debate on the European Union has created fault lines of division between the Tories who wish to stay in and the eurosceptics who believe that their values are now better represented by Ukip. Providing that the Tories stay in power, which looks increasingly unlikely with every British by-election that takes place, the promised in/out referendum will hopefully provide Cameron with a starting point on how to negotiate some common ground.

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