The author of this article is Onar Am.
This article was first published on LibertyNation.com and we re-publish here with kind permission.
Thanks, in part, to her handling of Brexit, British Prime Minister Theresa May will be remembered as one of the weakest heads of state in modern times. When the British people voted to leave the E.U. in 2016, the former empire was in a uniquely strong position to obtain a favorable Brexit agreement. Amazingly, May managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and negotiated a deal that is so awful that it compares to the Versailles Treaty that Germany was forced to sign after being defeated in World War I.
Theresa May
What else could she have done? Perhaps a look at Britain’s Iron Lady, former PM Margaret Thatcher, can be instructive. During her terms, she faced far greater adversaries than a weak E.U., and she became a legend for the way she handled them.
The Falklands War
Just like Venezuela, Argentina was once one of the richest and freest countries in the world. They abandoned the free market in favor of socialism and fascism, which destroyed the economy and created popular discontent and riots. In a desperate attempt to avert attention away from their failing economy, the leaders of the military junta decided in 1982 to invade the British territory of the Falkland Islands.
They thought that the U.K. was weak and wouldn’t care about a little rock in the south Atlantic far away from the British Isles. They were mistaken. Thatcher resolutely sent warships to the Falklands, and 74 days after the invasion, the Brits had won the war.
The Trade Unions
Socialism wasn’t just destroying the Argentinian economy; it was also ruining Britain, and the unions were particularly nasty. Rather than acknowledging how socialist policies were suffocating economic growth, the unions grew ever more confrontational and totalitarian during the 1970s.
Their stranglehold on society was a key reason that Thatcher won the election in 1979. In office, she secured legislation that dramatically reduced their power. In 1984 she expressed her views on the leaders of the trade unions as follows: “We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty.”
The unions tried to resist in a final major conflict in 1984 and 1985 but to no avail. The government shut down all the unprofitable coal mines and liberalized the energy markets.
Tough Brexit
How would Thatcher have handled the Brexit negotiations? We can never know, but some educated speculation may be in order. Northern Ireland is the thorn in Britain’s side. After a decades-long civil war between Protestants and Catholics, relations have finally started to normalize. The E.U. saw this as an opportunity to force a lousy treaty on the U.K. Unless it accepts an awful agreement, the E.U. would erect a toll and passport barrier between Ireland and Northern Ireland, thereby potentially disrupting the fragile peace and reigniting the conflict.
Based on her past behavior, a typical response from Thatcher would have been to threaten to retaliate with erecting toll barriers of their own through areas that neighbors U.K. territory. That includes two of the busiest shipping lanes in the world: the English Channel and the Gibraltar Strait.
By threatening to send warships to enforce a toll and passport control through these routes, she would likely have been able to scare the E.U. into making significant concessions and reaching a reasonable Brexit deal.
We will never know for sure if this is what she would have chosen, but the thought experiment illustrates the ocean of cowardice that separates Thatcher and May.
MrsThatcher was as bad as all the rest of them.
Lord Carrington was on the telly Explaining that we were negotiating with Argentina to pass the Falklands over. to save money and betray.. And that our supply ship ( Plus gun ) would not be calling at the falklands to save money and to avoid unpleasantness.36 hours later the news broke, The people of Britain were incensed and she declared war
So now you know . I bet its been rewritten .I was teklephnoned that day by an Argy we exported to, who was in tears.
Politicians are NEVER to be trusted. Although Carrington sacrificed his carreer
They will spend multple billions to buy votes. But they’re always short of money.to do it. That is their contribution.
May has no idea at all. Its a good job she is being replaced. Her attitude to Vladmir Putin was appalling. The whole charade, and that is just what it was. Trying to look strong for once and not making a very good job of it at that. Not very statesmanlike if you ask me. At some point we are going to have to start making amends with Russia and bringing them on side. Better to be on the right side of them than the other, but that doesn’t mean one has to agree with everything they say and do.
I think Mrs Thatcher (and indeed anyone aiming to be equivalent to her in stature now) might have torn into the EU for its wastefulness and corrupt accounting (rather than sweeping this under the carpet as ‘collateral’), torn into the biased media that portrays the EU as some kind of necessary ‘advancement’ when in fact it harks back to everything that has been bad in Europe for two hundred years (rather than kowtowing to the prejudiced and bought-out media), torn into the EU’s economic model, which is so obviously doomed to catastrophe (rather than bleat about how sad she is over austerity, lie about her intentions, and sneakily undermine the chances of a real Leave), she would also have ensured a deal by pointing out the utter hypocrisy of the EU’s negotiating stance in declaring any version of “Leave” to be a lose-lose, when by definition a better solution must be found or the negotiation is meaningless (rather than running like a good little girl to their excellencies in Brussels) and by the same token shown the world what a deeply immoral stance the EU takes over democracy, the will of the people as expressed in referenda, in its corporate/socialist rhetoric and romantic ideas about its own superiority, and pointed out that in 35 years the EU has performed badly, damaged its own economies, damaged those of its neighbour Africa, and benefitted only the small, powerful and privileged extremely misguided even dangerous groups that direct it; she would finally have stood up for people’s freedom and for the institutions of Common Law and historical precedent, pointing out how these have always been hated by the ideological elites that now run the EU (rather than actually pouring scorn over the UK’s own traditions under a hollow pretence of “loving” them as May has done) and (rather than being just another 3rd-Way lib-lab-dem-tory-wet puppet) shown the world that Britain has economic and political traditions around freedom and self-determination that have been bequeathed to other nations the world over – successfully until the hand of Corporatist Marxism got a grip – and that these are far far more to be desired than the historical communist/fascist and now obviously neo-feudal attitudes that pervade not only the EU but regrettably also the UK elites too and have ever since the 30s and 50s.
ipz – I believe she would also have torn into those Remoaner ninnies in her own party for acting against Democracy and the Tory party mandate which enabled them to be voted into power.
I agree with Jake Bennett’s comment below: if Thatcher had stayed as Prime Minister, she wouldn’t have signed the Maastrict Treaty and we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.
The more I look back at history and the more I read of the ‘alternative narrative’, it becomes clear that while Mrs Thatcher may have initially been in favour of the EEC as it was back then, it is likely that she was changing her opinion as it became clear what was entailed in the future.
Hence the moves at the time to ‘remove’ her and ‘replace’ her with someone more willing to be suppliant to the wishes of the nascent European Union, ie John Major, who has revealed himself in recent years to be a furvent supporter of the EU ‘project’.
Thatcher knew what was coming, and if she opposed it, she had to be disposed of.
“Oceans of cowardice” – so true and such an apposite expression.
May’s legacy indeed.
Thatcher was a strong leader, but her problem with Scargill only showed me that she could be very nasty to decent folk, and she came out of that Coal Mine problem with me being totally against her. I would score her as PM at 8/10.
May was quite different. She was the Tory Party’s Jonah and whatever she tried turned bad. I consider that she made a big mistake going into politics at all. The worst PM in my 75 years. I would have to score her as 1/10. I do that in the light of what we might now be stuck with, so that a 0/10 is still mine to use. Otherwise May is a total zero score.
Agree with you re the miners. Scargill used them as well as cannon fodder in his class war
Re May was going to ask you what the single point was for before I read on ! I wouldn’t even give her that.
Spot on
The wonderful Margaret Thatcher would have ‘handbagged’ the lot of them!! She was cut off at the knees by the nauseating, petulant narcissist Michael Heseltine, the pompous windbag Kenneth Clarke, the pygmy politician ‘dead sheep’ Geoffrey Howe, et al, because she realised that the European Union was a monstrous, empire building Fedaralist dictatorship which was sucking the life out of our country.
These cynical, traitorous, ignorant Remainers of that time brought down one of the best Prime Ministers of this century, testimony to the sheer pernicious nightmare of the horror story which is the EU. Under her leadership we would have been OUT a long time ago, on OUR terms and with the dignity and independence we voted for.
We will probably never see her likes again, being cursed with the dross of the stomach churning, self-serving sewer of Parliament as it it is today – with a very few notable exceptions such as the laudable Steve Baker, who should be our Prime MInister.
Hear here !
I couldn’t put it any better.
The whole of Government; elected and unelected politicians, civil servants and the rest of the dross need to be given a deep clean.
The swamp desperately needs to be drained.
In earlier times many would correctly be described as traitors and their heads displayed on poles to warn their replacements what happens to people who act against their Country.
I don’t think she would have done, or needed to do, anything quite so drastic. Thatcher would simply have left. I.e. what people variously call “WTO Brexit” or “Hard Brexit”, or the “Disastrous No Deal Brexit”, and what the normal person in the street understands Brexit to be.
Mrs Thatcher would not have signed the Maastricht Treaty and so we would not find ourselves in this situation. She fully understood that Maastricht moved us out of an economic union and into a federalising political one.
Just a quick point, Mrs. May is not a head of state.
If her aim was not to get the UK out of the EU, then she might not have been weak. In some ways she was really tenacious, parliament was against her, she suffered both the biggest defeat in an election and in the HoC of any PM ever, yet she trundled on regardless. Only agreeing to step down to stave off a vote of no confidence in her by grass roots Tory members. In a way May was brave in her intransigence.
It is interesting to reflect that Lady Thatcher was one of the architects of the European Union’s Single Market and the UK a founding member of the EU. In 1975 she campaigned vigorously for the UK to remain in the European Economic Community.
Charles Moore, her biographer, claimed that she had come round to the position that the UK should leave the EU, but she never unequivocally publicly said so.
She made the mistake of thinking the EU was about trade.
So did we all, but it never was, although we were told it was.Conned from the start and before the start.