The Spectator’s Notes | 17 December 2011

A Spectator footnote on David Cameron’s adventure in Brussels last week. In 1990, Nick Ridley gave a famous, prescient, ill-tempered interview to the paper in which he condemned the single currency as a ‘German racket’. He had to resign, and Mrs Thatcher’s fall was not long in coming. Last week, Ridley’s nephew, the Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson, gave an interview to The Spectator in which he said that, since the eurozone seemed to be trying to form a new country, we should wrest the right to rule our own country back.