Although the feckless spending of successive Labour Governments has resulted in massive decline for Britain, there is one thing that Gordon Brown got right on the economics front: he denied Tony Blair’s plans to take Britain into the single European currency.
Launched in 1999, the Euro has been the bedrock of European elites’ dream for a United States of Europe. And there’s the rub: founding a major economic program on the basis of a supranational political dream meant there was surely trouble ahead. Nowhere is this more visible than in Greece today (and in Portugal and Spain), where their governments’ desperately need national monetary and fiscal controls to restore some semblance of confidence in their economy. Instead, Greece is forced to endure the same interest rate as Germany, Cyprus, Finland, France, and Slovenia among others; unable to devalue their currency or enact measures that will restore economic competitiveness.
EU leaders argue that the United States of America has a wildly successful single currency and Europe needs the same. However, the reason why a single currency works for America is precisely the reason why it won’t work for Europe – because America’s success is borne from its primary inherent strength: America is a single nation with one government, one language and despite political wrangling, one citizenry prepared to accept governance at each other’s hands. Europe is not – and never will be – a single country. It is surely only a matter of time before the single currency comes up against this reality with truly disastrous results.
