There is nothing new or unusual about the Tory commitment to protect the environment. The last thing we want is to leave environmental debts for our … - Margaret Thatcher

We fought to show that aggression does not pay and that the robber cannot be allowed to get away with his swag. We fought with the support of so many throughout the world: the Security Council, the Commonwealth, the European Community, and the United States. Yet we also fought alone – for we fought for our own sovereign territory.

Last week, Mr President, I seemed to hear a strange sound emanating from Blackpool. And I thought at first it was seagulls. [laughter] Then I remembered that Labour was holding its annual Conference there. And I realised it wasn't seagulls, it was chickens—[laughter and applause] chickens being counted before they were hatched—[laughter and applause] except for Labour's call to enter the ERM and cut interest rates. That was a case of counting chickens after they'd flown the coop. Then, I heard voices getting all worked up about someone they kept calling the “Prime Minister in Waiting”. [laughter] It occurs to me, Mr President, that he might have quite a wait. [applause] I can see him now, like the people queuing up for the Winter sales. All got up with his camp bed, hot thermos, woolly balaclava, CND badge ... [laughter and applause] Waiting, waiting, waiting ... And then when the doors open, in he rushes—only to find that, as always, there's “that woman” ahead of him again. [applause and laughter] I gather there may be an adjective between “that” and “woman” [laughter] only no-one will tell me what it is. [laughter and applause]

Not the least of those opponents was Jacques Delors. By the summer of 1988 he had altogether slipped his leash as a fonctionnaire and become a fully fledged political spokesman for federalism. The blurring of the roles of civil servants and elected representatives was more in the continental tradition than in ours. It proceeded from the widespread distrust which their voters had for politicians in countries like France and Italy. That same distrust also fuelled the federalist express. If you have no real confidence in the political system or political leaders of your own country you are bound to be more tolerant of foreigners of manifest intelligence, ability and integrity like M. Delors telling you how to run your affairs. Or to put it more bluntly, if I were an Italian I might prefer rule from Brussels too. But the mood in Britain was different. I sensed it. More than that, I shared it and I decided that the time had come to strike out against what I saw as the erosion of democracy by centralization and bureaucracy, and to set out an alternative view of Europe's future.