Who are these people that matter?

Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission has indicated to French radio that the UK is "closer than ever before" to joining the euro as a result of the fallout from the global economic crisis. He noted that "I don't mean this will happen tomorrow, I know that the majority are still opposed, but there is a period of consideration underway and the people who matter in Britain are currently thinking about it."

Who are these people that matter? Brown and Mendelson? Just because this Government's record on the economy is far from stellar, it does not mean that we should join the Euro zone. The same arguments are being put forward for joining the Euro zone as were stated for going into the Exchange Rate Mechanism and we all know how that turned out. If the UK had been subject to the interest rates of the eurozone, we would probably have had a far worse boom and bust. The best article by the way that I have read on this is by the excellent Dan Hannan MEP (see http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/daniel_hannan/blog/2008/11/16/joining_the_euro_would_be_the_worst_possible_response_to_the_sterling_crisis). I want us to retain our independence in setting fiscal and monetary policy. As Dan Hannan notes, the weak pound is an indictment on more than a decade of Labour economic mismanagement. In any event, William Hague has quite rightly stated that "Britain's budget deficit and national debt will soon be outside the euro's entry criteria".

The Government needs to come clean as to its policy in this area. Instead, we have reports of a Treasury Department, the Euro Preparations Unit, spending millions of pounds on preparing to join the Euro. In this economic climate, all the talk of joining the Euro can be destabilising. As Neil Parish MEP noted recently, the Government should back the Pound.