So David Cameron has finally halted the advance of European domination of Britain .................. or has he ? Has he, instead, sidelined the UK from future major European economic decisions ? Has he sidelined the UK from the EU ? Has he created a '2 speed Europe' ?
Cameron vetoed whatever it was that France and Germany wanted to do to save the Euro, supposedly because he was unable to gain sufficient safeguards for Britain's financial services industry. In truth, he was, of course, more interested in satisfying his Party and other active supporters, and also avoiding the catastrophe of a UK Referendum on continued membership of the mess that is the European Community, Union or whatever it currently calls itself. Anything that would trigger a referendum would also spell the end of the current coalition government, something which he had to avoid at all cost, so he did. The fact that it was almost certainly the right thing to do is rather irrelevant in political terms.
The whole idea of the European Union goes back to the immediate post-WW2 years, when European politicians were looking for ways to ensure that there could never be another major european war. Bringing countries together in an economic union was then seen as the way to achieve this, and it has since blossomed into the stinkwort that is the 'European Community' of today. Of course, the politicians never let the people know of their ultimate ambitions and thought they could arrive at their destination, of a single European state, by stealth; to a significant extent, they were correct, until now.
The invention of the 'Euro' as a single currency was clearly designed as a way of bringing about further integration between countries; rules that were necessary to ensure that the system could work were, however, avoided, circumvented or simply ignored. The result is the shocking mess that exists today. 17 countries have converted to using the 'Euro', at least several of them never having met the required criteria in any sense that any accountant could accept; of course, governments tend to avoid using accountants and, instead, rely on the vague prognostications of economists to support their often insane ambitions, and this is what happened.
Now we have a political crisis to add to the pre-existing financial and economic ones, but the politicians would rather suffer the torments of 'Dante's Inferno' than admit that the original concept was flawed and needs to be re-assessed. Instead, they continue to discuss ways of shoring-up the impossible structure that is the 'Euro'; those countries already in hock to the 'Euro' see little choice but to stick with it, even if it means eventual meltdown, while the paymaster, Germany, has already committed so much politcal kudos, not to mention money, to trying to maintain this ludicrous enterprise, that a voluntary withdrawal is now politically impossible. The other main player, France is in the invidious position of being a prime architect of the system, and can't possibly contemplate its failure, but is also likely to be its next major casualty; the French political elite also hates the British, so putting 'Boy Dave' in an awkward spot is seen as being an earner of serious 'brownie points' for President (for the moment) Sarkozy. This was done at the recent gathering and has been pounced upon by the French press.
The 'Euro' is dead and Cameron did the right thing, for all the wrong reasons. The largely political solution now being cobbled together by the 17 'Euro' countries will achieve little as, for countries such as Greece, remaining within whatever new rules are produced, will eventually prove as unpalatable as remaining within the old. Addiionally, German electors will eventually decide that they have had enough of paying the debts of Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Spain and the rest; the whole project will collapse.
Britain is, whether 'Merkozy' likes it or not, a major power in both finanical and political terms, at least in the small pond that is Europe; we cannot be ignored, nor sidelined. The EU cannot make major decisions without Britain's involvement; it can, of course, develop agreements between different groups of member nations but no such agreements can be made outside of existing treaty arrangements. The 17 'Euro' nations can huff and puff all they like but they cannot develop arrangements that contravene any existing treaty obligations; equally, they upset the UK at their peril.
There could be the creation of a '2 speed Europe' but what would that mean ? How would it work ? If the UK was forced into a referendum and the people decided to leave the Union, what then ? The UK has places to go; the Commonwealth is the largest block of nations in the world, outside of the United Nations. The UK is still one of the world's largest economies and cannot be ignored; the EU is an agglomeration of disparate nations with vastly different, and largely incompatible, economies. Where would Italy, Greece and Portugal, not to mention Hungary, Croatia and Poland, look if the UK borders were to be closed, or restricted, to them ? Germany cannot save them all.
Which would you choose to ally yourself with ?
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