Faint praise for Brown for choosing not to join the euro

From: Gordon Lawrence, Stumperlowe View, Sheffield.

WITHOUT doubt, Gordon Brown, with bovine clumsiness played havoc with the china shop of the UK economy. However, we should be profoundly grateful for his brave refusal to join the EMU system and reject the euro.

His resistance might, of course, have been mainly to thwart Tony Blair who was an ardent supporter of the single currency. Nevertheless, in spite of the strident voice of mainstream Left-liberal opinion, he courageously stood his ground. Surely, recent events justify that decision.

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The euro was intended to be the crucial catalyst driving the EU machine towards full federation: but it’s turning out to be the spanner in the works and the likely catalyst for its disintegration.

The fumbling operations, so far, enacted by the near-dysfunctional core countries to rectify the situation, have merely been equivalent to an ambulance effort to allay the immediate demise of the whole sorry system.

In the longer term, they must allow either the fringe countries to leave the system and retain the euro for an inner nucleus of states or for a newly devised central authority to attempt to commandeer all fiscal, as well as monetary, control for the countries involved.

This would entail the financially solvent states transferring resources to the likes of Greece and even Italy and the peripheral ones accepting the control of taxation and government expenditure from the ascendant powers like Germany.

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To believe the electorates of these diverse fringe countries will readily accept such domination from the plutocrats at the centre is stretching credibility too far. It’s a pipe dream.

But whatever the outcome, you can guarantee that the gravy train in Brussels will expect its lavish lifestyle to continue unmolested – austerity is a concept unknown to this political elite regardless of the degenerating state of their treasured project. And in spite of Brown’s good sense in disowning the euro, Britain will be dragged in, as the whole thing unravels, not only because of the almost certain global contagion, but our own banks’ involvement in the European debt crisis.

Indeed, George Osborne’s disputed budget cuts may very likely prove to be too shallow to save the coalition from serious embarrassment and the country from extensive collateral damage. Oh to be a eurocrat.