There is a lot of rushing about and huffing and puffing going on around the EU, the Eurozone, the Euro and where the UK stands. The is also much shouting and breast beating about "The Euro mustn't be allowed to fail","The UK will lose influence if it stays out of the melee/doesn't at some time join the Euro/Eurozone/sign up to this and that". For the UK itself there is the sight of Leader Dave, one moment resolute that some powers ,particularly those over City regulation and employment law, must remain totally in UK hands and promising that he will stand firm on these demands. The next moment he is off again to see Merkozy and saying that the return of powers isn't that important and he must do what it takes to stay at the table,- even if maybe well below the salt. Today's performance in the Commons was robust as it had to be amongst the baying hounds of Prime Ministers' Question Time on all sides. How though will he handle tomorrow's EU summit and the ever mounting list of controls being floated out from the Merkozy camp?
It's all very confusing and often irritating. One can not guarantee always being able to avoid throwing a shoe through the TV screen.
So, just to untangle the apparent complexity and make it all simple, what's really going on, who is up to what, can the Euro or even the EU, stay in business and would it really be a disaster for the UK or anyone else if it didn't or both changed their form? Some of it is a bit murky but let's have a go and see if we can sleep any easier. To do that we will have to go back a bit,- right to the 1950s in fact.
With everyone exhausted and well nigh bancrupt after World War 2, maybe the last of the old legacy wars originally fought on horseback with legions of supporting "poor bloody infantry" but just moved along a bit with smarter land kit, new aircraft and less leaky ships, it was time to take stock. It was quite clear that a succession of massive slaughterfests had historically achieved nothing and everyone would have been more prosperous without them. That's even without considering the effect of the decimation of the best of two generations of young men. In 1939 there had evetually been little option but for "the Allies" to go to war with Germany to prevent a rolling genocide by a rogue regime (as opposed to the German people per se) but the cost in lives and money was appalling and everyone other than maybe Stalin recognised that this sort of conflict had to be avoided ever again.
The result was a rise of interest in some kind of unity in Europe on the basis more or less of the Chinese philosophy of constraining potential enemies by "embracing the bear", the basis of many alliances in business, politics and other human interactions. You don't like the school bully? Neutralise him either by force (tried and proven too dangerous) or by smothering him with mateyness. It had to be the latter.
There was some disagreement about what degree of embrace was necessary to do the trick. France and Germany favoured political union from the start although they recognised that the process would have to be gradual, reasonably well disguised, and never put starkly to their citizens who would be scared stiff of the idea. This group became the founders of the EEC, later the EU and were known as "The Six". It would have been seven but France's General de Gaulle, no lover of the British despite their leadership of the efforts to give him back what he saw as his country in 1944, made sure that they didn't get in. The other European grouping, which now included Britain and was a much more natural home for it was The European Free Trade Area, EFTA. They became "The Seven" and favoured a looser, less smothering form of cooperation,- simply a free trade area.
Over time, 3 of the 7 ,including Britain, have moved across to become EU members, leaving just 4 small states as the remnants of EFTA which lives on as, funnily enough a sort of tier 2 EU. There is a great opportunity for this to enlarge again as this concept of a 2speed EU becomes more and more likely in the form of the 17 Eurozone countries remaining in a deadening, inflexible embrace and the other 10 gravitating to a much less rigid and free wheeling free trade area. This would be ideal so long as the centralisers of the 17 didn't pull up the trade drawbridge. They would be very unwise to do so as Britain in particular with its genuinely very open markets is a big buyer of their industrial products. Cutting off noses to spite faces not impossible though when there is an underlying desire to punish Britain for its non conformist behaviour. Given the right links between the 17 and the 10, business would flow across the 27 borders but centralist political and fiscal control would not. That would remain the preserve of the 17 who seem to like that sort of thing. Cameron's best move now would be to come out openly and declare that the UK can not live within the straitjacket of a European superstate and lead the split in a constructive way. The more states he could take with him the better. The bigger "New EFTA" is the less the core EU can do without its business so the stronger would be the free trading bridge.
The main reason for the fractured EU and worse, the Euro problems, is that the two concepts of a United States of Europe and the single Euro currency are fundamentally flawed. Europe is not the USA. Each country has a long history and deep culture of its own. Most have been at war with, invaded by or occupied at least temporarily by all sorts of combinations of each other. The early settlers in America were different. They had the unifying feature that they were fleeing the suffocation of Europe with oppression, persecution of just lack of opportunities at home and wanted a completely fresh start. Even then it wasn't all plain sailing and the collision between two rival groupings had to be broadly resolved by the Civil War. Subsequently the federal structure of the USA has preserved some independence for each state and not all love each other too much. The overall single nation relationship has through been close enough to demand a strong common federal currency and the US dollar has been extremely successful.
The European Union is nothing like the USA. It is not a natural single political entity to which all its citizens have at one time escaped and therefore willingly signed up . As result it is even less a natural single currency union. The laws of dynamics mean that efforts to tighten it produce more strains and stresses than strengths. Any structural engineer will tell you what naturally and unavoidably happens to such edifices. There is a period when they can be kept up by strengthening, adding a bit here and a bit there but each of these adds weight and diminishes the efficiencies of the whole and generally just transfers the potential break point to somewhere else. The reinforcement patches also mean ever increasing costs and higher and higher maintainence, so that more and more good money is poured after bad. People say things like "It must be kept up at all costs" rather than "Let's design a new one to replace it and once in place we will let the original fall down or be blown up".
It is the "It must be kept up" line about both the EU and the Euro that is being shouted by not only the Merkosy core but also by the UK's David Cameron. Cameron is missing the biggest and most revolutionary trick of all. He should be trying to keep it all simple and easily understood by all and saying "It's not working so let's replace it with version 2.0 and start again recognising historic, current and future realities." The clarity of a return to a separate high cost beaurocracy driven EU and a lower cost, more free wheeling EFTA would be ideal and give the component nations the oppirtunity to decide which model they really want rather than being swept along with the creaking one size fits all EU superstate and all its attendant costs and limits on individual sovereignties. The UK should go for that without further ado and ignore Foreign Office hand and other parts wringing about "loss of influence in Europe". Leadership of the EFTA group would give the country a much more significant role in European politics than its alternative sidelining within an unreconstituted EU.
Any odds on Mr Cameron going that? Not good we suspect. As a manager rather than a leader, he isn't strong on vision and isn't driven by a passionate political philosophy. He is more inclined to back away from the conflict and settle for a wordy fudge in Brussells today. If he does though he should beware the assorted rotteweiler pack awaiting him back home. Hello Boris,the Eds and the rest.
