On 20 September 1988, the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, delivered a speech at the College of Europe in Bruges that redefined the Conservative Party’s relationship with the European project. Thatcher’s “Bruges speech” was a direct challenge to the federalist ambitions of the European Commission president, Jacques Delors.

In a July 1988 address to the European parliament, Delors outlined his vision for deeper integration. He predicted that within ten years, “80% of our economic legislation, and perhaps even our fiscal and social legislation, will be of Community origin”.

Then, on 8 September, Delors delivered a speech to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) conference. He called on Britain’s labour movement to embrace a “uniquely European model of society” and support the commission in building a “platform of guaranteed social rights”.

Thatcher, of course, had spent the duration of her premiership at odds with the British labour movement. Having received an invitation to deliver a speech on Europe in Bruges, she decided to frame her address as a direct rebuttal.

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Thatcher’s response, delivered in the Belfry of Bruges, set out her stark opposition to European supranationalism. However, the ‘Bruges speech’ was not – as it is often remembered – an inherently anti-European speech.

Thatcher’s argument developed from her assertion that “Europe is not the creation of the Treaty of Rome” (which founded the then-European Economic Community in 1957). She described the British people as “as much heirs to the legacy of European culture as any other nation”.

She referred to a British tradition of liberty, stemming from Magna Carta. But added that “without the European legacy of political ideas we could not have achieved as much as we did.”

She stated that Britain had “fought to prevent Europe from falling under the dominance of a single power.

“We have fought and we have died for her freedom. Only miles from here, in Belgium, lie the bodies of 120,000 British soldiers who died in the First World War.”

And so Thatcher declared that Britain’s “destiny is in Europe, as part of the Community”.

But the Bruges speech is best remembered for the rhetorical pivot that followed.

In the speech’s most consequential passage, Thatcher warned: “We have not embarked on the business of throwing back the frontiers of state at home, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels.”

The prime minister argued for a “willing and active co-operation between independent sovereign states” rather than a federalist entity.

She said that any attempt to “suppress nationhood and concentrate power at the centre of a European conglomerate would be highly damaging and would jeopardise the objectives we seek to achieve.”

She argued: “The lesson of the economic history of Europe in the 70’s and 80’s is that central planning and detailed control do not work and that personal endeavour and initiative do…

“Our aim should not be more and more detailed regulation from the centre: it should be to deregulate and to remove the constraints on trade.”

Thatcher concluded by rejecting “Utopian goals” in favour of taking “one step at a time”.

She stated: “Let Europe be a family of nations, understanding each other better, appreciating each other more, doing more together but relishing our national identity no less than our common European endeavour.”

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In the immediate term, Thatcher’s remarks exposed a rift between her and the elements of the Conservative Party that supported the ‘European project’. The speech thus placed her at odds with senior ministers such as Geoffrey Howe, the foreign secretary.

In his memoirs, Howe wrote that hearing that speech was “like being married to a clergyman who had suddenly proclaimed his disbelief in God.”

He added: “I can see now that this was probably the moment at which there began to crystallise the conflict of loyalty, with which I was to struggle for perhaps too long.”

As for Thatcher, she wrote in her memoirs that “not even I would have predicted the furore the Bruges speech unleashed”.

The Conservative Party’s divisions over Europe intensified over the next two years, including over the issue of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), an EEC economic stability measure.

The ‘European question’ featured centrally in Howe’s resignation and the leadership challenge that led to Thatcher’s defenestration in 1990. Indeed, Thatcher’s famous “No. No. No.” rejection of European federalism – which triggered Howe’s resignation – was a distillation of the worldview captured in the Bruges speech.

Howe subsequently told the commons that “the prime minister’s perceived attitude towards Europe is running increasingly serious risks for the future of our nation.”

To take a longer view, the address is seen as a seminal statement of Conservative euroscepticism. It marked a point of departure in Conservative thought on the ‘European question’, electrifying those elements that were instinctively hostile to integration.

The eurosceptic call-to-arms therefore contributed to the bitter debates that characterised John Major’s premiership.

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To adopt a still longer view, the speech began a process whereby European policy became an all-consuming concern for many in the Conservative Party.

In this respect, commentators have observed a continuity between Thatcher’s Bruges speech and the positions later adopted by ‘Leave’ supporters during the 2016 Brexit referendum.

The Bruges Group, a eurosceptic British think tank and campaign group, is named after the speech.