Tony Blair’s instincts on the Euro were right

Currious, are the problems in Spain and Greece nothing to do with the euro? Or is it too much public spending? You can not have it both ways.

There are some very simplistic arguments here, notably the spurious analogy between EEC/EC/EU and Euro membership. In hindsight it’s clear that the Euro was a project whose unintended consequences – especially socially austere consequences on poorer groups and states – were overlooked and that many of the arguments put over by the sceptical right had something to them, especially as regards democracy. It surely is time for the centre- left to take a hard pragmatic view of the EU and the Euro and think more radically and more deeply about both. Tony Blair’s best legacy was a tough minded ability to break with existing dogma.

Your quoting of unemployment figures is selective and meaningless – there are a multitude of factors that determine it, not just Euro (non-)membership.
I can only endorse earlier comments about your City First argument.

The Euro is a train wreck. Politicians deliberately obfuscated the data to avoid having to put difficult decisions (like the question of fiscal integration) in front of their electorates and have a system which will fail spectacularly sooner (and less painfully) or later (and more painfully).

Britain will indeed be hurt by that, because our main trading partners will see their economies going into meltdown and that will inevitably affect us, but things would be much worse for us if we were in the Euro (as we’ll soon see when a French economy that’s stronger than ours in many ways gets dragged down by its attachment to the Eurozone).

There’s a wider point that’s important to note here. While institutional incompetence is a key factor in the Eurozone being so badly off, the unwillingness of electorates to accept political reality plays a role too. The western world as a whole (and europe in particular) is in a similar situation to where South America was at the turn of the 20th century. We’ve got used to being among the richest countries in the world and we expect that to continue regardless of how much we produce. With limited resources and rapidly industrialising economies across the world, Greece won’t be the only country in which politicians use imported credit to maintain a standard of living that the output base doesn’t support for as long as possible until the credit is withdrawn and things implode.

Our vague and unspoken idea that the world owes us an elevated standard of living regardless of our productivity is one that will prove very painful once reality sets in.

 Is she on crack?

If there is one thing that would have hurt the UK’s recovery even more, it would be having interest rates at double what they are now. The monetary independence that the Pound gives has enabled the BoE to mitigate the effects of both the initial recession and subsequent fiscal contraction.

It’s also a touch selective to quote German and Dutch unemployment figures, when the rate of the Eurozone as a whole is higher than ours.

Next stop beyond Barking ….

I must confess I find what this woman has written quite deppressing. She either a thieving cynic living off the EU project or totally delusional. Either way we deserve more intelligent thinking and representation. To be honest I can’t be bothered fisking the idiotic drivel that Ms Honeyball has written it speaks for itself.

God you stupid stupid person

Wow. I toned down my first comment as I thought it I might get modded if I told Mary she was a moron.

I come back six hours later and find people from across the political spectrum saying the same thing. How do you guys expect me to be argumentative and contrarian if we keep agreeing?

The swivel-eyed loons are out in force this morning.

This is a very good argument for being able to recall your councillor/MP/MEP. When they demonstrate such a level of understanding it would be good to make them stand for re-election to show they still have support. It’s also another argument against party lists, which would be used in an elected HoL.

“Except of course, we are. The recession is deeper here than elsewhere in
the EU. Britain’s double dip recession matches the economic problems of
almost any save the most deficient Eurozone country.”

So imagine how much worse it would be if we were in the Euro and unable to remedy the situation at all with Quantitive Easing?

The first few tranches of QE pumped 250 BILLION pounds of liquidity into the system, when labour were in power, which prevented that recession, the deepest and longest since the 1930′s, from turning into a full blown depression.

Since then we have had further inputs of money, which would not have happened had we joined the Euro.

Perhaps you are right, perhaps we should have joined the Euro, and then we would not only have lost a million private sector jobs (under labour from 2007 – 2009) we would also have lost a lot more public sector jobs during that time too and REALLY seen how incompetent labour were at running the economy.

Now we are faced with Austerity, which is NOT a choice, but is an inevitable and guaranteed consequence of RUNNING OUT OF MONEY!

I think we should all rejoice that John Major won us an opt-out of the Euro and we exercised that opt out!

if John Major had not won that opt-out, then we would have had your wish and we would be in far deeper trouble today!