Nicholas Ridley, Baron Ridley of Liddesdale

Nicholas Ridley, Baron Ridley of Liddesdale, PC (17 February 1929 – 4 March 1993) was a British Conservative Party politician and government minister. As President of the Selsdon Group, a free-market lobby within the Conservative Party, he was closely aligned with Margaret Thatcher, and became one of her Ministers of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1979. Responsible for the Falkland Islands, he tried to resolve the long-running sovereignty issue with Argentina, which detected Britain's reluctance to defend the territory, and later invaded it.

Quotes

 * "This is all a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe. It has to be thwarted. This rushed take-over by the Germans on the worst possible basis, with the French behaving like poodles to the Germans, is absolutely intolerable." ... "When I look at the institutions to which it is proposed that sovereignty is to be handed over, I'm aghast. Seventeen unelected reject politicians [...] with no accountability to anybody, who are not responsible for raising taxes, just spending money, who are pandered to by a supine parliament which also is not responsible for raising taxes, already behaving with an arrogance I find breathtaking - the idea that one says, 'OK, we'll give this lot our sovereignty' is unacceptable to me. I'm not against giving up sovereignty in principle, but not to this lot. You might just as well give it to Adolf Hitler, frankly."
 * Quotes from an interview with Dominic Lawson: "Saying the unsayable about the Germans", The Spectator (14 July 1990).