
Jacques Delors: an unlikely Brexit hero
‘Up yours, Delors!’ It was the perfect headline for the Sun: crude, defiant, unambiguous and directed at a Frenchman. The paper’s front page on 1 November 1990 called on ‘its patriotic family of readers to tell the filthy French to FROG OFF!’ The tabloid was asking its readers to turn towards France at noon the following day and shout the insult in response to the proposal by the President of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, to introduce European monetary union, setting economic convergence criteria with the objective of a single currency and a single central bank. The revulsion at the ECU, or European Currency Unit, was, however, a proxy for the broader movement
