The Channel Tunnel from above

Margaret Thatcher has been hailed as the driving force behind the Channel Tunnel by its current boss.

She revived the idea of a fixed link between Kent and France which had been around for nearly 200 years before she became Prime Minister in 1979.

The latest attempt had been aborted by the Labour Government in 1975.

Despite her later scepticism over the European Union, she embraced the idea and set in train a sequence of events that led to the opening of the tunnel in 1994.

She was in Canterbury Cathedral with French President Francois Mitterand to sign the Treaty of Canterbury on February 12, 1986, which paved the way for the project.

Eurotunnel Group chairman and chief executive Jacques Gounon (pictured) said: “Margaret Thatcher’s vision was a driving force behind the building of the Channel Tunnel, one of the most iconic infrastructure developments of the 20th Century.

“With the construction of this vital link between the UK and Continental Europe, she left a legacy that has been used by more than 300 million people since it opened in 1994.”

John Noulton, former head of public affairs at Eurotunnel, said that without Margaret Thatcher, Kent would not have had the Channel Tunnel.

“She gave Kent the Channel Tunnel. Not all of Kent wanted it but they have come to find that it hasn’t done them any harm at all and indeed has brought them some good.”

But he noted her surprise that Government officials had chosen a rail-based system rather than a drive-through tunnel.

She asked the Anglo-French company to investigate the feasibility of such a tunnel by the turn of the century. However, Mr Noulton doubted that it would ever be built.

Meanwhile, a poll by Saga, the Folkestone-based finance and holiday group for the over-50s, found that a third of respondents - more than 3,000 - rated Baroness Thatcher as their favourite Prime Minister.

Nearly 40% thought that had she been PM today, she would have been the best at leading the UK out of its current economic troubles.

Paul Green, Saga’s director of communications, said: “It was Baroness Thatcher’s clarity of vision and purpose that led many of today’s over 50s to identify Mrs Thatcher as the politician they believed would be the best to lead us out of our current economic troubles.

“Despite her combative image, one in five of the 10,203 people we asked believed she was the post-war Prime Minister who most cared about the UK and its people.”