An unsayable truth: time for Britain to reconsider the euro.
| Author | Cliffe, Jeremy |
The Europe Dilemma: Britain and the Drama of EU Integration
Roger Liddle
I.B. TAURIS/POLICY NETWORK, 2014
Ever wondered why Germany's railways are so much better than those of Britain? One answer is found in the aftermath of the Second World War. The complete destruction wrought on Hitler's Germany forced the federal republic to build a new, modern infrastructure on the ruins of the imperial one. Britain, by contrast, could make do by patching up its old Victorian network. So it did.
A similar story can be told of the two countries' geopolitical settlements. After the War Germany, along with most continental states, had entirely to rethink its place in the world and consequently threw itself into the task of European integration. Britain, diminished yet victorious, had no such reckoning; no natural juncture at which to establish a post-imperial role. Successive politicians have sought to bring about such a moment, but with limited success. As a result (to quote one of them, Tony Blair, in 1995) the country has remained 'half in and half out' of Europe. This, said Jean Monnet, was the price it paid for 1945.
Such is the argument of an important new account of Britain's relationship with the continent. And it is this sweep that makes Roger Liddle's book so compelling. To a field characterised by swaggering ignorance (witness eurosceptic MPs carping about diplomats 'going native' in European capitals), the Labour peer brings two things that are frustratingly rare: historical depth and experience of today's Europe and its workings. The result is a polemical case for a reformed EU policy--and, specifically, a new debate about British membership of the euro--that stands on the shoulders of three preceding sections describing its evolution to date.
Missed opportunities
In the first Liddle tells the story of UK-EU relations to 1997 as a series of missed opportunities, for which he holds both main parties accountable. On the Conservative side, the myths of Dunkirk (Britain and the Commonwealth standing alone) and of 'offshore Britain' (the UK as a colder, rainier version of Singapore) gave first the Macmillanites and then the Thatcherites reservations about Europe. Labour figures too left Britain's stance towards the continent uncertain: Hugh Gaitskell failed to recognise the importance of the country's continental partnerships; Roy Jenkins resigned as Harold Wilson's deputy rather than staying to mend bridges after the latter committed to a...
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