Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [456]
But it was by no means certain that we would reach agreement at the forthcoming special European Council. I was prepared to make some compromises; after all, the question of precisely when and how agricultural stabilizers would bite was the sort of matter even people intent on checking agricultural spending could legitimately disagree about. But far more difficult to gauge was whether Messrs Mitterrand and Chirac and Herr Kohl would think it worth their while achieving a settlement on terms which some of their farmers would find unpalatable.
By now the French election campaigns were in full swing and the rivalry between President and Prime Minister was intense, with ‘cohabitation’ nothing more than a fiction. Accordingly, when they arrived in London for an Anglo-French summit on Friday 29 January 1988, the important discussions I had with President Mitterrand and Prime Minister Chirac had to be at separate meetings. The contrast between their respective styles was once again evident. President Mitterrand was not in good form and had a heavy cold, which I hoped he would not pass on to me: I seem to have an unfailing ability to attract any passing cold germ. Nor was he properly briefed about the difficult European Community matters on which I wanted to concentrate and he had to break off half way through to receive explanations from Jacques Attali, his adviser. He was obviously relieved when the conversation turned to defence and foreign affairs. I was not sure that I had got very far by the end of the discussion, though as always it had been agreeable enough.
The same could not, however, be said of my meeting with M. Chirac, who was in robust form. He began very frankly, saying that with the presidential elections just three months away he had a real political problem with the forthcoming Council. His own interest, he said, lay in a failure at Brussels. But for wider international reasons he was prepared to work for success. Lest I conclude that this meant he was going to be a push-over, he spelt out for me precisely what his strategy was. He said that we could either settle at Brussels or wait until the financial pressure built up on the Community because of its lack of money. But in that case we would be under the Greek presidency, which he was certainly right in describing as offering an ‘uncertain prospect’. If the British continued to block the settlement on agriculture at Brussels which the rest of the Community — by which he meant the French and the Germans — wanted we would be isolated and attention would focus on our rebate. I replied that this was evidently no time for diplomatic language. If he thought that ganging up with the Germans to ‘isolate Mrs T’ was going to work, he was sadly mistaken. I had no fear at all of being isolated because I was demanding that agricultural surpluses be brought under control. M. Chirac again insisted that if there was to be a row it would turn out not to be about surpluses but about Britain’s rebate. I advised him not to threaten me and promised that if there was no satisfactory solution on agricultural spending and our rebate, there would be no increase in ‘own resources’. But he continued to insist then and over lunch that the present German presidency’s proposals were the furthest France was prepared to go.
How much of this was Gallic bluff I could not know. But it certainly made it all the more important