More than most speakers, Mrs Thatcher was capable of producing a collective intake of breath, but I have seldom witnessed a more pronounced mass inhalation than when she told a conference of political leaders and think-tankers in Prague in 1996:
The overarching European federalist project, which was envisaged by some from the start but which has only in recent years come out into the open, is in truth a nightmare . . . If this new Europe were not to follow the path to separate great power status, it would be the first such power in history to renounce its independent role. It would have pioneered a new course in self-abnegation. It would have chosen moral influence over political power. The history of Europe — bloodstained, as well as idealistic — should not encourage us in these fantasies.
Despite all of this, it is true that she was reluctant publicly to advocate British withdrawal, perhaps because she did not wish to provide evidence for the claim that she was making life difficult for her successors as party leader. She also resisted pressure from her friend Malcolm Pearson, who wanted her publicly to acknowledge that she had made a huge error when she signed the Single European Act in 1986. Lord Pearson, who had resigned the Tory whip in 2004 and later joined UKIP, believed that such an admission would transform political debate in a way that would help pave the way for Britain's withdrawal, but his entreaties were ignored.
During the period that followed her resignation from office I provided occasional speech writing help, normally on defence topics. In the lengthy discussion which customarily preceded the drafting of her speeches and which ranged over a wide range of topics, I was left in no doubt about the strength of her conviction that EU membership was fundamentally at variance with British interests, that the European project would end badly and that she felt more strongly about this than about any other matter. But the issue of withdrawal was never discussed and the withdrawal word never uttered.
