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The euro-fail: Britain’s close call.

Looks better from the boats.

OH, NO. NO EURO? It’s hard to lament the decision by the Prime Minister to stand aside while Europe once again goes through a cycle of implosion, chaos and despair.

Yet those who blithely assumed Britain should simply accept whatever France and Germany needed to do in order to save themselves from the collapse of the euro are now, like Nicholas Watt in today’s Guardian, worried that Britain is dangerously ‘isolated’ in Europe. The danger is real, but thanks to Mr Cameron Britain is ‘isolated’ the way those on lifeboats were ‘isolated’ from the Titanic.

The certainty of those in the American and European press that the failure to embrace a failing currency was somehow suicidal was blatantly on display yesterday in a near-hysterical New York Times report by Sarah Lyall and Stephen Castle on the Brussels summit:

No matter what happens at the European summit meeting on the euro in Brussels that begins Thursday, Britain is sure to lose.

There is looming recognition at 10 Downing Street that if the euro falls, Britain will sink along with everyone else. But if Europe manages to pull itself together by forging closer unity among the 17 countries that use the euro, then Britain faces being ever more marginalized in decisions on the Continent.

This is nonsense, of course. With the exception of Germany, the countries struggling to stay afloat in the eurozone are facing economic failure because they are spending more than they are taking in, and they lack the political will and economic wisdom to do anything about it. They are broke. That’s a simple and inescapable fact.

The way out is to find a new balance between expenditure and revenue, yet countries like France are already taxing their citizens into economic stagnation and politicians are left with no other policy choices. Now we see the enormity of the political risks the post-1945 ruling classes in France, Italy, Spain and the rest have taken. They attempted to buy permanent political power by producing entitlements faster than their citizens could produce actual products. They failed and now must accept the cost of failure.

Voters, who have never been given an opportunity to express their acceptance of the EU’s massive burden of government, do not seem to have much incentive to accept austerity packages that are the price of yet more government. The idea of a referendum in Greece (or anywhere, really) terrified the EU because they knew what voters would say. Even as this economic disaster was unfolding, EU bureaucrats, according to the Daily Diary at TheParliament.com, were arguing about how to ‘improve the passenger experience in Europe’ and ‘holding a conference on staying active.’ Never have so many been employed to do so little at so great a cost.

Meanwhile, democracy in Europe has been greatly diminished by the European experiment, which seems to be shaped by constant crises that must be solved, damn the consequences. In Greece and Italy, to save the euro technocrats have been given the power of the state, sheltering the ruling élites from the fury of the ballot box – if not the streets. Having failed to gain a mandate from voters for a new constitution, most EU member governments simply adopted a “treaty” – the tarnished Treaty of Lisbon – instead. Now that treaty is being revised hurriedly to pave the way for even more onerous burdens on people who, on evidence, never wanted any of this in the first place.

Last week, Jacques Delors, the man most responsible for the single currency, told the Telegraph‘s Charles Moore that the euro was likely to fail. To suggest that Britain should become directly involved in that failure is an absurdity.

Bloggers have made much of the irony of watching most of Europe offer itself to the Germans – after a century of war –  if Berlin will only pay their bills for them. Indeed, what is occurring in Europe is the bland and modern version of an old-fashioned European conflagration; this is what war without evil and without armies looks like.

Britain will survive yet another European disaster the way the nation survived others: by staying as far out of it as possible and defending Great Britain with the help of trans-Atlantic allies. Five years from now, when peace breaks out in the form of stable currencies and sensible financial policies, the rubble of conflict should be in Paris and Berlin, not in London.

– Calamo.

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justsomeguy69
justsomeguy69
12 years ago

so much for the new world [imgcomment image[/img]

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