Tory eurosceptics & Ireland

By Peter Skinner MEP

We all know that, for some people, opposition to Britain’s membership of the EU is an issue that obscures all else.

But it has been incredible this week to watch a series of Tory politicians and right-wing commentators come out to say that we should let Europe’s economy go to pot because of their obsession.

News that the UK will provide financial assistance to Ireland has resulted in a cacophony of ill-informed and dangerously wrong responses.

Calls by europhobic Conservatives for the UK not to participate in support for the Irish economy are reckless, risk undermining British economic and political interests, and amount to a form of isolationism when the UK should be showing solidarity with one of its closest partners.

We do more trade with Ireland than any emerging market and our banks have billions invested there. We share a land-border with the country and have historic and cultural ties that go back centuries. Ireland is our closest partner and yet euro-obsessed Tories want to risk that all for their own ideological reasons. They are dangerously wrong.

They seek to lay the blame for the crisis facing Ireland solely down to its membership of the eurozone, but the problems facing the country are far more complex.

Here is Tory MEP Daniel Hannan blogging on Monday: “Ireland is in this mess because of the Single Currency”. No mention of the mad lending binge of Irish banks. No mention that non-euro Iceland (which in 2004 he hailed as undergoing an “economic miracle” thanks to pursuing a “Thatcherite agenda”) faces an even greater bank-led crisis. No observation that the crisis in Greece – to which he refers – is totally different, caused by structural problems, uncompetitive business practices and a legacy of poor government decision-making. No, it’s all the fault of the euro.

Here is Tory MP Douglas Carswell, writing in Tuesday’s Guardian:

“It was euro membership, with ruinously low interest rates for more than a decade, that plunged Ireland into the economic abyss.”

Again, no mention that uncontrolled lending by Irish banks resulted in an unsustainable property boom. No contrast with the likes of Finland, Austria and Belgium, which shared the same interest rates as Ireland but sensibly managed to avoid its property crisis. No observation that the UK and US only narrowly avoided a financial meltdown caused by their banks, while eurozone stalwarts France and Germany sailed through relatively unscathed? No, it’s all the fault of the euro.

Clearly membership of the eurozone imposes burdens as well as benefits on members. But to conclude that Ireland’s woes are solely due to the euro, and therefore advocate UK non-involvement in a bail-out, is economically illiterate.

Adopting such a simplistic approach risks a failure to learn from mistakes and prevent a similar crisis in the future. And calls to stop any assistance to Ireland would potentially put the UK’s own economy at risk.

The Treasury is right to ignore such calls. The responsible action for the British government is to provide as much support as sensible to Ireland, either bi-laterally or through formal EU mechanisms.

Britain has relied on international support in times of need, from the end of World War II with US Marshall Aid through to IMF support in the 1970s – we should provide the same support to the Irish in their time of need, and ignore the talk of those on the Tory right who put ideology before partnership.