Britain and the euro
The UK’s position on the euro has been ambivalent ever since it was conceived by a small group of federalist fanatics in Brussels.
While a broad swathe of the population, especially in the South West, has been against membership, the political class has kept its options open. Now, with a new Tory/Liberal Government, and the slow collapse of the eurozone, attitudes appear to be changing.
In Berlin on Friday, Prime Minister David Cameron put aside weasel words and articulated unambiguously what many of us have thought about the EU for decades. No more treaties, no eurozone business conducted under the umbrella of the wider European Union — Britain will veto them at birth.
A notice of intent has been driven into the gap between eurozone and the concept of the EU. This wedge is apposite because, although around half of our exports go to the eurozone, they are sold to people and companies, not to politicians.
The implications of this are profound. If the eurozone wants to turn itself into a country with a new political government to oversee its economic infrastructure, it will have to make treaties of its own. The UK will have none of it, knowing it would be drawn into the net at some point.
This is very shrewd. What Cameron seems to be implying is that Europe must make up its mind about the solidity of the common-currency zone, or break it up so that what’s left is viable.
Britain is now striking out on its own, daring a central core of states to remake its own EU. If that happens, whole chunks could be ripped out of the existing treaties where Britain, Sweden and other possible volunteers are concerned.
It’s almost a new Doctrine that the Prime Minister would do well to define more clearly in the near future. Brussels has dug itself into a hole that could have been avoided. Its blinkered personnel need to be forced into an acceptance of the magnitude of their failure.
The alternative is that the once smug, comfortable-in-its-own-skin euro area could indeed be responsible for a worldwide Great Depression II, as some economists are now warning.
If the above scenario is true, Britain has a chance of disentangling itself from the Continental mess without losing out on trade in the longer term.
