Was Margaret Thatcher right about Jacques Delors after all?

From the outset, Britain was out of step with the ‘European project’, and the Iron Lady’s clashes with the Commission president may well have sown the seeds for Brexit. But, says Mary Dejevsky, her objections to the bloc becoming far more than a free-trade grouping could yet prove prescient

Margaret Thatcher greets Jacques Delors at the European Single Market conference in London, in 1988 (PA)

The death of Jacques Delors this week, 18 months short of his 100th birthday, prompts many thoughts. It marks the final passing of what might be called the Europe generation – those whose youth was defined by the Second World War, and who picked up the baton of Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman in their determination to ensure that nothing like it ever happened again.

What began in 1950 as the European Iron and Steel Community graduated into the Common Market, the European Economic Community, the European Community and the European Union as it exists today. As president of the European Commission for a crucial decade from 1985, Delors was the prime mover of changes that forged a majority of European countries into a single trading market, and prepared Europe for its entry on to the world stage.

It is sometimes said that Delors was more of a European than he was French and, as such, a one-man embodiment of what was becoming the European idea. One strand of supporting evidence was his decision, despite favourable polls and much urging, not to stand for election as president of France after he left the Commission in 1995. He preferred to continue his advocacy for Europe.