| "No. No. No." | |
|---|---|
| Statement on the European Council | |
 Margaret Thatcher in 1990 | |
 BBC News clip (30 October 1990)[1] |
"No. No. No." was a speech given by UK prime ministerMargaret Thatcher to theHouse of Commons in response toEuropean Commission presidentJacques Delors's proposals forEuropean integration at the October 1990European Council summit meeting in Rome. Her remarks led to the resignation of deputy prime ministerGeoffrey Howe and the ensuingConservative Party leadership election in which Thatcher was ousted.[1]
On 30 October 1990, a day after returning from theEuropean Council summit meeting in Rome, Thatcher delivered a statement to theHouse of Commons on the summit. Both her foreign secretaryGeoffrey Howe and chancellorNigel Lawson had threatened resignation the previous year if Thatcher did not agree to let Britain join theEuropean Exchange Rate Mechanism.[2] Thatcher subsequently replaced Howe as foreign secretary withJohn Major, and appointed Howeleader of the House anddeputy prime minister. At the summit, Thatcher went against hercabinet's joint position by rejecting Britain's membership of any future arrangement for aneconomic and monetary union.[3]
Thatcher was speaking in response to a question from theLeader of the Opposition,Neil Kinnock,[a] when she said that:
The President of the Commission,Mr. Delors, said at a press conference the other day that he wanted theEuropean Parliament to be the democratic body of theCommunity, he wanted theCommission to be the Executive and he wanted theCouncil of Ministers to be the Senate.No. No. No.[4]
Thatcher then continued by contending that "perhaps theLabour Party would give all those things up, easily. Perhaps they would agree to asingle currency, to total abolition of thepound sterling. Perhaps, being totally incompetent with monetary matters, they'd be only too delighted to hand over the full responsibility, as they did to theIMF, to acentral bank",[1] the final part of her statement a reference to the1976 sterling crisis under aLabour government.[4]
It was a spontaneous expression and had not been prepared.[5]
Thatcher's "No. No. No." response was seen as undermining any progress that had been made at the summit in Rome.[5]
Following Thatcher's speech, Howe then resolved to resign from the government and join thebackbenches after Thatcher dismissed further EEC integration and the potentiality of a single currency, which had been espoused by theDelors Commission, with her "No. No. No."[2][3] It has been suggested that Howe's resignation speech is what ultimately led to thedownfall of Thatcher's premiership.[6]
Thatcher's biographerCharles Moore felt that she expressed her words "firmly" but "not vehemently", with each pronunciation of the negative exclamation "spoken quieter than the last" as she put her spectacles on, preparing to move on to her next point.[5] Moore also felt that Thatcher's response was "endlessly and rightly quoted afterwards" as part of a "classic combative statement of her views" but was "almost always wrenched from its context"; she was not attacking the Community (EEC) or undermining her own government's policies, but was instead attacking the Commission for its ambition of furtherEuropean integration (which her government and mostConservative MPs opposed),[7] denouncing the idea that the EEC should acquire the attributes of a European government.[7] Moore wrote that "for those long waiting to make their move [to replace her as prime minister] 'No. No. No.' was not so much a shock as a cue".[7]
Other scholars have noted that Thatcher's "No. No. No." speech became a rallying cry forEurosceptics, both within and outside the Conservative Party, and led to an entrenchment of Euroscepticism both within Conservative Party thought, and wider British political debates.[8]
In a 1995 interview with Swedish journalistStina Lundberg Dabrowski, Thatcher made a self-deprecating reference to the speech, responding to Dabrowski's repeated attempts to persuade Thatcher tojump at the end of the interview with"'No, no, no', to coin a phrase."[9]
At the2023 Conservative Party conference in Manchester, a number of items of the party's merchandise range included images of Thatcher saying "No, no, no", includingbaubles andChristmas jumpers.[10]
And it proved too much for Sir Geoffrey Howe who resigned from government two days later. Mrs Thatcher herself was ousted from Downing Street by her party a few days later.
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