Trumpeter 4 Europe

Seven reasons why the UK will not join the Eurozone.

There has recently been much media speculation in the UK about us joining the Eurozone. This will not happen in the near future for at least seven reasons. They are as follows.

1. Rupert Murdoch will not allow it. All British politicians are keenly aware that if they seriously espouse pro-European policies they will have the full vituperative mendacity of the Murdoch press and most other newspapers turned against them to destroy both them and their policies.

2. Hence the second reason, namely the cowardice of the two main political parties in addressing the realities about the EU and the UK’s position in it. Both Labour and Conservative parties must live in fear of the malicious mendacity of the press, as well as of the deep divisions within their own ranks about all matters EU. In the case of the Conservative party its leader has gone so far as to promise a referendum on ratification of the Lisbon treaty if it gets into government before the ratification process is completed. And it will recommend a no vote. Thus giving Rupert Murdoch what he wants but effectively destroying Britain’s relations with the EU. We shall certainly not be joining the Eurozone after such a referendum, either in the near future or ever.

3. The Lib-Dems will almost certainly not form the next government. They are the only major UK political party fully committed to pro-Europeanism and to joining the Eurozone. Vince Cable is the best potential Chancellor of the Exchequer we shall not have.

4. Most people in the UK are against the EU and all things European, including joining the Eurozone. Decades of systematic anti-European propaganda in most of the British press, coupled with the lazy ignorance of many media commentators more interested in drama than realities, have produced a population largely ignorant, hostile and deceived about the EU. That said the recent enormous fall in the value of the £ sterling against the Euro may be causing reality to break into the demonised fictive picture of the EU held by most people in the UK. To use WWII comparisons beloved of our tabloids, the recent “Stalingrad of Sterling” has resulted in the pounds in our pockets having about 30% of their relative value annihilated in a few months. That, along with the widespread winter retreat in panicked disorder of the proponents of the ideology that “free-markets are always right and victorious” may puncture belief in the inevitable victory of the chosen people of Adam Smith. There has already been a very important apostasy.

5. Which brings me to the fiscal consequences of “The Conversion on the Road to the Next General Election”. We couldn’t get the UK into the Eurozone even if we wanted to. How this came about is truly miraculous and bears some telling. It is a story of almost biblical revelations as can be read in this extract from the Biblica Frugalitarum Britannicarum. Before he was raised by party acclamation to the highest office in the land Gordon Brown had served as a tax-collector, ie chancellor of the exchequer, in the service of the emperor Antoninus Pius Blair of fond memory. Antoninus Pius fell heroically in the Mesopotamian wars. (Even now his body, embalmed in religious rhetoric, is kept as a trophy in the possession of a victorious U.S. president.) Not long after his elevation to Prime Minister Gordon Brown was knocked off his ass on the road to the next general election. He was struck by flying debris from the collapse of a street wall near « The street of the money-lenders ». Struck from his ass he fell stunned and confused. Why had the invisible hand of the markets not saved him, as the fellow Scot and great prophet Adam Smith had foretold ? And in his dazed condition he thought he saw millions of voters plunging into the great pit of recession ; and he saw the diabolically devious Dave Cameron harvesting their votes; and he was sore afflicted. And in his affliction a vision came to him. He saw in the sky above his head the shining face of J. M. Keynes, and he heard the voices of demand management, and he saw written above the face of Keynes in letters of shining gold the instruction « Return to the ways of The General Theory and ye shall be saved for another term in office ». (Some claim that what he saw were not real golden letters but only gilded Bretton wood – who can know for sure. And some say that it was just before this time that Prime Minister Brown first began to believe in the power of «The Risen Mandelson ». «The Risen Mandelson » goes under many epithets, such as « The Lord », « The Prince of Shadows », « The Risen One » and others effable but unprintable. Some believe him divine because of his powers of resurrection, and in truth he has had many more of them than the originator of that practise. His divine status was never confirmed by the electorate some say.)

After his vision Gordon Brown continued again on his road to the next general election but filled with a new purpose. He was going to bring Brownian economics to the world. And so it was that he and his converted apostles, St. Darling and others, began to go amongst the journalists and the bankers and the mortgage-holders and the people of the land and say unto them « Oh, people of great debts do not despair ! I have a cunning plan. » « Go forth and shop ! Borrow and spend, borrow and spend ! Consume, consume ! Let there be no satiation amongst you ! » Thus he greatly spoke and greatly showered taxpayers money, not yet collected for he had forsaken such ways, upon deserving banks most afflicted with the fruits of speculation. And he was judicious in the mortgage debts he forgave, and he was fulsome in the promises he made of more taxpayers money to come upon those sore laden with debts. And alongside his acolyte Banker King he mightily smote those savers who in their unwholesome prudence had thought to lay up a store of real wealth for their future, for their aged years. « Woe to them who do not follow the ways of piling up great debts » said the followers of Brownian economics. And Prime Minister Brown was filled with ire against those who believed in the old gods of fiscal moderation, numerous in other lands, for they doubted the revelation of the new Brownian economics come to save the world. (Those unbelievers were later cast down into the purgatory of stable currencies and low inflation rates as a warning to others. After these mighty efforts Prime Minister Brown gazed out upon the land where he had replaced prudence with promises. He studied no longer in the ways of tax-collectors but studied instead the opinion polls. And he saw therein the return of the voters to his party and knew thereby the wisdom of his new ways, and knew that as ye sow so shall ye reap.

The fruits of the above described Brownian economics were described a couple of weeks ago in a penetrating article by Martin Wolff in the Financial Times. The UK total public debt is forecast to rise to 57% of GDP four years hence, by UK calculations, but 68.6% of GDP using the criteria of the Maastricht treaty, which laid out the way to the Eurozone. The annual budget deficit is forecast to be more than 8% next year and to be at least 3.3% in 2013-14 on the very optimistic Treasury figures. Both deficit and debt ratio are outside the guidelines for entering the Eurozone. And very likely the reality will turn out to be worse than these figures which are based on the assumption of a short recession.

Conclusion, the deterioration of UK public finances during the next five years at least will mean we couldn’t go into the Eurozone even if we wanted to.

6. Other Europeans may not want the UK in the Eurozone. After his conversion to « crass Keynesianism » Gordon Brown sent out his Epistles to the Europeans exhorting them to take up the ways of Brownian economics. These exhortations are meeting considerable resistance in some countries, especially Germany, where they have an old-fashioned belief in economies that can pay their way. They continue to believe in a fiscal after-life beyond general elections.

We blythely assume in this country that if the UK government decides to join the Eurozone we shall be allowed to join. But would such make sense for those who want to maintain the solidity and stability of the Eurozone ? Some in Europe, especially in Germany, have noticed that Brownain economics in the UK makes Hugo Chavez of Venezuela look like a model of fiscal rectitude. (With the vital difference that Hugo Chavez believes in socialism, whereas New Labour, as many now recognise, is a fundamentalist sect of Thatcherism and devoted to the extirpation of socialism.) Why should the Eurozone want to absorb a large debt-laden consumer-junkie economy of proven fragility and instability and which has a very long record of inability to maintain the value of its currency ?

7. And finally the UK will not enter the Eurozone because Gordon Brown will not allow it.To be in that zone would deprive him and future British politicians of the monetary and fiscal freedoms they feel they need to manipulate and massage for electoral purposes the economy over whose instability and decline they preside.

KEVIN HANNON, WEST MIDLANDS EUROPEAN MOVEMENT.

12 December 2008