Weight of EU bureaucracy vindicates Margaret Thatcher to this day – Yorkshire Post Letters

From: Gordon Lawrence, Sheffield.
Margaret Thatcher's past views on Europe continue to polarise the Brexit debate.Margaret Thatcher's past views on Europe continue to polarise the Brexit debate.
Margaret Thatcher's past views on Europe continue to polarise the Brexit debate.

I WAS quite amazed to read Dr O J Sykes (The Yorkshire Post, August 1) citing Margaret Thatcher’s views on the Common Market voiced in the 70s on the confused understanding that her statement reinforced the values of the EU as it exists today.

It seems to me that Dr Sykes is deluded by his own anti-Brexit ardour. It is true Mrs Thatcher spoke enthusiastically of the benefits and opportunities awaiting us in a European free trade area, but with the caveat of a minimum of bureaucratic interference.

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This opinion was totally in line with her economic philosophy of the freedom of markets. She was never bewitched, like Edward Heath, Tony Blair and John Major, by the lavish Brussels’ ego-gravy train and it was not too long before her opening zeal was soon to wane as our very sovereignty was threatened and the realities of the enterprise slowly crystallized, revealing a disturbing move towards centralisation and intense politicisation. “We have not rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain only to see them reimposed at a European level!” she declared in 1988.

Should Britain be leaving the European Union at the end of this year?Should Britain be leaving the European Union at the end of this year?
Should Britain be leaving the European Union at the end of this year?

The nice tabby cat of a simple customs union free from excessive governmental regulation was turning into a rampant tiger with a political motive completely alien to the original concept.

The initial arrangement that Thatcher so ardently endorsed in the 70s, as quoted by Dr Sykes, is, in fact, almost the one we are attempting to achieve now in our Brexit negotiations but the sclerotic juggernaut, that the EU now symbolises, demands we also carry the load of bureaucracy and freedom-limiting inhibitions that have accumulated since those Margaret Thatcher declarations of the 70s.

From: Jas Olak, Press Officer, Leeds for Europe, Leeds.

IF, as companies fear (‘Most firms worry about a no deal Brexit, CBI warns’, The Yorkshire Post, July 31) there will be no new UK-EU trading arrangements in the New Year, something Boris Johnson says would be a “failure of statecraft”, expect existing “rejoin EU” murmurs to quickly become a clamour.

From: Thomas Reed, Harrogate.

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GIVEN the upheaval at the end of the year when the country leaves the European Union, I’m curious that Parliament is not working all through August to check the details and legislation – they can’t afford, more so after Covid-19, to get it wrong.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

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Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson

Editor

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