Bill Carmichael: Silence of the euro fanatics

UNTIL fairly recently, you couldn't pick up a newspaper or turn on the radio without being assailed by the euro fanatics raving that Britain was doomed unless we immediately abandoned the pound and joined the single currency.

The UK was being left behind, they claimed, and the only way to secure

financial stability and economic prosperity was to throw in our lot with our European neighbours.

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Anyone who raised any doubts about the euro, for instance by pointing out that a single monetary policy couldn't possibly cater for the needs of many widely diverse economies of the member states, was dismissed as a deranged Little Englander.

Well, it has all gone a bit quiet on that front now, hasn't it?

For example, Energy Secretary Chris Huhne and New Labour favourite Will

Hutton were so zealous in their backing for a single currency that, a few years ago, they wrote a pamphlet – Why Britain should join the euro.

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But, despite their undoubted expertise on the topic, they have remained strangely silent as the current crisis in Euro-land has unfolded.

Neither have we heard much – in fact, absolutely nothing at all – from the last government's ranks of euro enthusiasts such as Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Peter Hain, Chris Bryant and Neil Kinnock.

What about the Tory party's euro cheerleaders – Ken Clarke, Michael

Heseltine and Chris Patten? A few years back, you couldn't shut them up on the benefts of abandoning the pound, but today they utter not a peep.

Even the normally talkative Sir Richard Branson has become

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uncharacteristically reticent on his former frm support for the euro.

Surely Sir Richard hasn't suddenly become publicity shy?

No, the real reason for this embarrassed silence is that the euro lobby got things catastrophically wrong and they simply have not got the courage to admit it.

As many eminent economists forecast at the time of its foundation, the euro has been a disaster for Europe.

The Irish Republic, for example, spent 400 years fghting for

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independence from the United Kingdom, only to meekly hand over its national sovereignty to Brussels and Berlin by joining the euro.

The result is that Ireland hardly exists as a nation state any longer. Today, it is little more than a colony of the EU and is less

independent than it ever was under British rule. Wolfe Tone and Michael Collins must be spinning in their graves.

Portugal looks likely to go the same way, followed perhaps by even bigger dominoes – Spain and Italy.

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The euro has been bad for Germany, too. The country's economy and currency were once so strong that it could even absorb the huge costs of reunifcation with the Communist East. But today, German taxpayers are becoming increasingly resentful of having to bail out the spendthrift Greeks. There are growing calls for the return of the

Deutschmark.

The UK, although not part of the euro, has not been unscathed. We've already been forced to contribute to European bailout funds and it looks as though we'll responsible for keeping the Irish economy

afloat for the foreseeable future.

There's no doubt that if Britain had been stupid enough to listen to the siren voices calling for us to join the euro, we'd be even worse off than we are now.

The least the euro lobby could do is to admit their error and apologise for their foolishness – but don't hold your breath.

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One politician, however, emerges from this debacle not exactly covered in glory, but at least with his battered reputation enhanced.

In many ways, Gordon Brown was a terrible prime minister, but he was largely responsible for keeping us out of the euro.

Thanks Gordon, we owe you one.