Margaret Thatcher warned about centralized power in Brussels 33 years before Brexit

The United Kingdom left the European Union after 47 years of EU membership. “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.” Then prime Minister Margaret Thatcher issued a stark prophetic warning during a speech at the College of Europe (in Bruges) on September 20, 1988.

Transcript:

Working more closely together does not require power to be centralized in Brussels or decisions to be taken by an appointed bureaucracy.

Indeed, it is ironic that just when those countries such as the Soviet Union, which have tried to run everything from the center, are learning that success depends on dispersing power and decisions away from the center, there are some in the Community who seem to want to move in the opposite direction.

We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.

Full transcript can be found at the website MargaretThatcher.org.