Friday, April 12, 2013

Belgitude

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!”