Milner
We thought we had found our way out of our difficulties, the Commission president, Monsieur Gaston Thorn, told the final press conference with evident disappointment. He'd been given a mandate, he said, to produce proposals for a solution of the budget problem, and the foreign ministers had all agreed last week that they would form a basis for discussion at their meeting in Luxembourg on Saturday. Now, suddenly President Mitterrand had withdrawn his agreement. It's the system of thought which is not acceptable, he said in his own news conference. He was not opposed to rebates for Britain, but France could not accept what he called “the institutionalisation of payments in an open-ended commitment.” Mrs Thatcher said that his statement came like a bolt from the blue, and it would inevitably affect this week's farm price negotiations, but she described herself as “very firm, very calm, very quiet.” I put it to her that some of her opponents over the budget issue described her as ‘stubborn’. The Prime Minister did not dissent:
Thatcher
Well, yes, I am stubborn, I have to be stubborn.
It's in Britain's interest that I should be, and there are many many people in the world who have good reason to be very thankful that there are times when Great Britain is stubborn in defence of certain values. But I mean if I weren't stubborn, they'd try to palm me off with settlements very much less than my judgment would lead me to accept. After all of the negotiations we've been through—to Luxembourg, to Dublin and to Strasbourg, they know I'm not palmable offable.