Back in the spring of 2001 an election took place in which William Hague led his Conservative party on an avowedly anti-EU anti-Single Currency platform. Then he and his party were mocked and jeered as a stuck in the past band of pensioners and fox hunting throwbacks whose politics revolved around saving the village pub and salvaging Imperial measurements – pounds and ounces. Today as a Telegraph survey of the City’s 25 leading economists reveals that the majority of these experts believe the Euro won’t survive the next five years it seems that Hague’s blue rinse brigade may just have the last laugh.
With Greece, Spain and Portugal all facing severe economic difficulties it looks as if the best the Euro Zone could hope for is to be able to stagger on with a much reduced membership. Yet now some are questioning whether the single currency can hope to survive at all. Indeed even German Chancellor Angela Merkel has come out and spoken of the grave existential threats that the Euro faces. And without its single currency it seems that European Federalism could soon find itself in the same dejected state as so many of the other doomed ideologies that European leaders have attempted to impose on their peoples over the last century.
Undoubtedly the global downturn has played its part; indeed the recession seems to be fast becoming a locomotive of history whose effects could well be echoing down the decades with us with for quite some time to come. Yet surely now is the time for those who so blindly championed a European single currency to confess that the whole project was ill conceived from the first. Once again outlandish visions of grandeur took one look at reality and decided they didn’t much care for what it had to say. Those who professed opposition to the Euro were branded as having committed the crime of nostalgia and were accused of standing in the way of progress while the rest of us boldly and valiantly marched on to our brave new sunlit transnational Utopia.
But the single currency was ill conceived and not because grandmothers across Europe were sentimentally clinging to their Pounds, Francs and Drachma but rather for precisely the reason that those who weren’t listened to gave; simply that it was unworkable. Even within individual Nation States different regions have greatly varying economic circumstances and compete with one another to influence their governments into pursuing an economic policy that best suits their own needs. It was madness to ever think that this would somehow not be all the more the case across a whole continent.
Not that anyone one would acknowledge it then and not that anyone will probably acknowledge it now but those geriatric, flag waving, Jerusalem singing Euro sceptics that lined up behind Hague ten years ago just may find themselves to have been on the right side of history all along.
With Greece, Spain and Portugal all facing severe economic difficulties it looks as if the best the Euro Zone could hope for is to be able to stagger on with a much reduced membership. Yet now some are questioning whether the single currency can hope to survive at all. Indeed even German Chancellor Angela Merkel has come out and spoken of the grave existential threats that the Euro faces. And without its single currency it seems that European Federalism could soon find itself in the same dejected state as so many of the other doomed ideologies that European leaders have attempted to impose on their peoples over the last century.
Undoubtedly the global downturn has played its part; indeed the recession seems to be fast becoming a locomotive of history whose effects could well be echoing down the decades with us with for quite some time to come. Yet surely now is the time for those who so blindly championed a European single currency to confess that the whole project was ill conceived from the first. Once again outlandish visions of grandeur took one look at reality and decided they didn’t much care for what it had to say. Those who professed opposition to the Euro were branded as having committed the crime of nostalgia and were accused of standing in the way of progress while the rest of us boldly and valiantly marched on to our brave new sunlit transnational Utopia.
But the single currency was ill conceived and not because grandmothers across Europe were sentimentally clinging to their Pounds, Francs and Drachma but rather for precisely the reason that those who weren’t listened to gave; simply that it was unworkable. Even within individual Nation States different regions have greatly varying economic circumstances and compete with one another to influence their governments into pursuing an economic policy that best suits their own needs. It was madness to ever think that this would somehow not be all the more the case across a whole continent.
Not that anyone one would acknowledge it then and not that anyone will probably acknowledge it now but those geriatric, flag waving, Jerusalem singing Euro sceptics that lined up behind Hague ten years ago just may find themselves to have been on the right side of history all along.
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