Five days to save the euro
Put one way, the European Union is one of most successful, if not the most successful trading bloc ever established. Put another way, its consequent establishment of a single currency to service that Union has every immediate sign of ending in disaster.
There are those in Europe who wanted it to fail; those who wanted it to succeed, and those whose downright dishonesty ensured that eventually what has happened would happen.Dishonesty has undermined capitalism more generally than the specifics that have broken the eurozone. Dishonesty underpinned the financial meltdown of 2008. The entire sub-prime mortgage saga a culture of mis-selling, mis-reporting- and mis-calculation. How much of this satisfied the necessary “mens rea” (intent) to prove dishonesty in a court of law remains open to question.
But it now transpires that the godfather of the euro, former EU Commission boss Jacques Delors himself, now recognises that the euro embraced, and still embraces, a number of European economies that contained seriously rogue elements. To wit, Italy and Greece – both of which ran, and still run, parts of the economy that are beyond the state’s control.
Given the scale of the error of including these “elements”, it is very hard to see how the euro in its present form can be rescued without a deliberate move to ensure that Italy and Greece, in particular, mend their ways. Can that happen without involving defaults by both – a consequence we are told would smash and sink the euro? What a conundrum.
Hence we are back facing yet another “five days to save the euro” moment – the build-up to another summit in Brussels. The build-up, too, to another moment in which the British will have almost no voice in influencing the course of events – a course of events that will have vast implications for the British economy.
We cannot predict where we shall be by Christmas. One senses that the enterprise is too big to fail and yet currently destined to do so.
If the euro fails, there is every possibility that the union will fail with it. But if the euro is reconfigured and the system is saved, where will Britain be then – even further from the levers of economic power that currently so heavily influence our own economic well-being?
A member of the public speaking on BBC’s Any Questions at the weekend complained that “because the UK press is so anti-euro, and largely anti-European”, there has never been a proper full-scale debate about either. She may be right.
Yet, the Commons has sprouted an array of members in all parties (with more from the Conservative ranks) demanding either a full blown debate or a referendum.
As Europe tries to sort itself out, with the UK largely confined to the touchline, perhaps the time is nearing when the mere educational power of such a debate, at least, would inform the public about the extent to which our destiny lies within or outside a continental currency bloc.