The Queen confided to the German ambassador that she believed the future of Britain lay in Europe, newly released diplomatic cables from 1988 have shown.
“Some have not realised this yet,” the monarch allegedly said of her subjects. She also appeared to back the creation of the single market.
In a memo composed on the occasion of his farewell visit to the British head of state on 25 November 1988, the then ambassador Rüdiger Freiherr von Wechmar reported that the conversation during an “emphatically warm and unrestrained” meeting had moved on to the subject of the British people’s attitude to Europe.
“With a smirk,” Wechmar wrote, “she noted that the Brits are still a very insular people, and to most of them the magical number 1992 doesn’t mean very much.”
That was a reference to the fact that, two years previously, European leaders including the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, had signed the Single European Act, which set the member states of the bloc the objective of establishing a single market by the end of 1992, a commitment that culminated in the Maastricht treaty. » | Philip Oltermann in Berlin | Sunday, May 19, 2019
