Lib Dem MEPs: introduce the Euro to the UK

This isn't party policy but... Lib Dems MEPS have called on Gordon Brown to re-launch single currency debate. Andrew Duff, the Lib Dem MEP leader, says helpfully:

The financial crisis will have a dramatic effect on the eurozone. Denmark and Sweden should join sooner than anyone expected. But in the UK, too, it is high time that the debate on the single currency is revived. In 1997 Mr Brown set five so-called economic tests to judge sterling's accession to the eurozone. Suddenly, all these criteria are met. The pound has fallen to a competitive exchange rate level. The City risks being pushed aside as supervision and regulation is strengthened inside the eurozone. And the economic cycles of Britain and the eurozone are cow completely in sync as they both plunge into recession together. Mr Brown's cleverly disguised appearance at the eurogroup summit in Paris was a notable achievement of the French presidency. But unless he now changes the terms of the British debate about EMU, the pound will be the ping pong ball bouncing beyond control between the giant footballs of the dollar and the euro.

Comments

[Keith Tunstall]

It's about time we faced the inevitable and joined. We would have more credibility inside Europe and around the world if we were wholeheartedly at the centre of Europe.

[Clare]

No, the President of the EU Commission would speak for us and we would loose what little that is distinctive about us.

[IRJMilne]

I am struggling to find an argument in Keith Tunstall's comment - "it's...inevitable...more credibility [credibility about what, with whom, and why?]...at the centre of Europe [by which he means the EU, ignoring the non-membership of Norway, Switzerland, et al]".

Happily, Brown does not want to drop 20 points in the polls at a stroke, so he will pay no attention to the Liberal MEPs.

[Philip]

So IRMJMILNE, you'll only be happy once the pound's sunk to £0.80p per Euro, and food imports start to go through the roof? Happily we'll have the theoretical advantage that exports will be competitively cheap, the only problem being that there are no exports.

Whilst we're waiting for the inevitable decline of the pound, we can happily take comfort in the fact that we are not in fact Iceland in disguise but rather Switzerland or Norway: two countries which have similar economic cycles to our own, similarly high debts, population & employment levels and financial prudence. Eh, IRMJMILNE?