The FT's Philip Stephens with a Maggie Thatcher anecdote --
My turn came during her big fight with Nigel Lawson about the chancellor’s effort to tie the value of sterling to the Deutschmark. Surely, I had needled her, she would bend eventually to Treasury pressure to take the pound into the European exchange rate mechanism? The year was 1989 and the occasion a drinks party hosted by political journalists at Westminster. In response to my act of lèse-majesté, Thatcher took hold (quite literally) of the lapels of my jacket: “Mr Stephens! You don’t understand! I won’t have the Belgians decide the value of the pound!”
My turn came during her big fight with Nigel Lawson about the chancellor’s effort to tie the value of sterling to the Deutschmark. Surely, I had needled her, she would bend eventually to Treasury pressure to take the pound into the European exchange rate mechanism? The year was 1989 and the occasion a drinks party hosted by political journalists at Westminster. In response to my act of lèse-majesté, Thatcher took hold (quite literally) of the lapels of my jacket: “Mr Stephens! You don’t understand! I won’t have the Belgians decide the value of the pound!”