The Ivory Tower Group launches pro-Euro campaign 2

Mark Wallace European Union

The competition for most poorly timed campaign of 2009 is already heating up, despite us only being two weeks in. Reuters is reporting that Willem Buiter, former Bank of England bigwig, has today launched a new campaign to persuade Britain to join the euro.

The fundamental plank of Buiter's campaign seems to be that now there's an economic crisis, people will want to seek safety and security in the Euro's cloying embrace, no matter what the cost. Unfortunately for him, he's wrong.

Our polling of last week produced two informative results on this issue.

In a referendum on the Euro:

64% would vote No
24% would vote Yes

Asked whether the financial crisis has made them more or less likely to support Euro membership:

18% say it has made them more likely to support the Euro
27% say it has made them less likely

That hardly suggests the "overwhelming" case that Buiter claims is now obvious in favour of Euro membership. If anything the research suggests that people are highly sceptical of the idea that bigger and more lumbering is in any way better, particularly in a crisis which is seeing America so hard hit.

Economically, the idea that is would be better for us fighting a recession if we had no control over interest rates, and had our economic reputation pegged to those of Greece and Portugal, for example, which had lie about the economic data just to join the Euro, is bizarre in the extreme. Add to that the political implications of losing control over one's currency and money supply and Buiter's on to a loser.

He's not exactly helping himself, either, though. His quote on Reuters displays a remarkable arrogance which is hardly going to win people over:

"There's a real risk of a triple crisis hitting this country — a run on sterling, a sovereign default crisis and the banking crisis. It's a small risk but it is an unnecessary risk that would be substantially diminished if this country had a real currency."

Wow- what a great way to persuade people that you respect them. If anything, talk of the Pound not being a "real" currency is going to alienate people more. His campaign doesn't seem to have a name yet – given this arrogant display, perhaps we should dub them the Ivory Tower Group.

Mark Wallace

Mark is a writer and political campaigner, ardent libertarian and eurosceptic.

Follow @wallaceme

David Dear

The true arguements both for and against the euro have never been put to the British public. The against has always been painted as a lack of soverienty and the for is always promoted by big business. The issues are far more complex than that. First we have to ask ourselves why the Euro and the Dollar are strong and the pound weak in the current crisis. I suspect that has a lot to do with size, currency is like shares, its value is dependent on the assets of the users of the currency, the Euro zone and the US have far more assets than the UK and therefore the currencies hold up better in a crisis. That such a situation should make the UK population less inclined to look favourably on the Euro now is frankly bizzare. 25% of the worlds currency reserves are now held in Euros and whether we like it or not it is here to stay. We will never have an informed debate on the Euro in this country because the majority of our politicians and our media do not want us to. If we did it is just possible that views on both sides might actually change.
Horatio Nelson

The ‘euro’ here in Germany is disastrous. Private households (families) have seen their savings and month-end bank accounts being whittled-down to near zero balance in the last few years. Life consists of ‘seeing that the account is about zero’ at the end of each month. Positive saving is not on. One saves to shore-up against financial difficulty. All that was done at the introduction of this politically motivated currency was to opportunistically remove the ‘DM’ symbol and to replace it with the ‘€’ – literally doubling prices. This has led to the present-day disgrace. The multiplicity of economic infrastructures in Europe forbids responsible, across-the-board imposition of one single bank rate. Here in the so-called ‘euro zone’ there’s no chance of application of currency flexibility (floating, revaluation, devaluation) to combat unemployment. Remember “Black Wednesday”? Lichtenstein, Germany, Luxembourg etc. are ‘euro’-chained to one another – whether their citizens like it or not! And look at this country. If the ‘euro’ has helped Germany during this crisis, I’d like to know how. Their finance system is in chaos and the national debt – over two billion ‘euros’ – is growing steadily at an officially stated 4400 ‘euros’ per minute. Oh fantastic, I no longer pay any exchange rate when I take a vacation in the ‘euro’ zone and I can now compare the price of a frankfurter sausage in Berlin with that in Vienna. Whopping deal! (Madrid and Dublin – still – have culturally different cuisines – so I can’t compare my frankfurters so easily with theirs though). What I do painfully miss though is my government, the control of which I completely lost at introduction of the ‘euro’. Was it Rothschild who noted that a country is controlled by those who control the country’s money? And here in this undemocratic country FRG, that’s “Brussels”. I’m still an optimist. Over the years “Europe” has gradually unmasked itself and I’m one of the many here among the German population who believe that the steady replacement of “Moscow” by “Brussels” is slowing and will, in time, reverse.
Regards
Horatio Nelson