Those who lead are always out in front, alone". Thatcher replied, "I am deeply touched by your words. They give me the greatest possible encouragement". On 5 January 1990, addressing Conservatives in Liverpool, Powell said that if the Conservatives played the "British card" at the next general election, they could win; the new mood in the UK for "self-determination" had given the newly independent nations of Eastern Europe a "beacon", adding that the UK should stand alone, if necessary, for European freedom, adding: "We are taunted—by the French, by the Italians, by the Spaniards—for refusing to worship at the shrine of a common government superimposed upon them all ... where were the European unity merchants in 1940? I will tell you. They were either writhing under a hideous oppression or they were aiding and abetting that oppression. Lucky for Europe that Britain was alone in 1940". The Conservative Party would have to ask, preferably at the next election: "Do you intend still to control the laws which you obey, the taxes you pay and the policies of your government?" Five days after this speech, in an interview for The Daily Telegraph, Thatcher praised Powell: "I have always read Enoch Powell's speeches and articles very carefully. ... I always think it was a tragedy that he left. He is a very, very able politician. I say that even though he has sometimes said vitriolic things against me". On the day of the Mid-Staffordshire by-election, Powell said that the government should admit that the community charge was "a disaster" and that what mattered most to the people of Mid-Staffordshire was the question of who should govern the UK and that only the Conservative Party was advocating that the British should govern themselves. Thatcher had been labelled "dictatorial" for wanting to "go it alone" in Europe: "Well, I do not mind somebody being dictatorial in defending my own rights and those of my fellow countrymen ... lose self-government, and I have lost everything, and for good". This was the first election since 1970 in which Powell was advocating a vote for the Conservative Party. After Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990, Powell said that since the UK was not an ally of Kuwait in the "formal sense" and because the balance of power in the Middle East had ceased to be a British concern after the end of the British Empire, the