Brown kept us out of the Euro, when Blair wanted in - maybe he'll one day get a bit of retrospective credit for that!
I've always been fairly pro-Euro as I reckon that by chance half the decisions made would benefit the part of the UK that is not the South East. And then they maybe wouldn't have to 'subsidise' us quite so much. Relying on the fiscal responsibility of the Italians is a hefty price though, I've come to realise.
I think the current stuff is overblown. The eurozone countries need to sort out the mess, a mess that Britain isn't directly involved in. Apart from being skint, in the medium term we need to focus on finding a better a balance between regulation and freedom in our regulated free market economy. Absolutely no prospect of it happening, like.

Or a lady boy.

Help me out on something

If the UK was to become completely independant from the EEC and was free to set its own rules and regulations on just about everything, does that not put us in a better position than the rest of Europe as Europe would be (in theory) all singing from the same hymn sheet stopping any of the countries having any sort of competitive advantage, whereas we are on the outside able to look in and offer an 'alternative'.

Which means 90% of our GDP isn't the financial sector, but he is prepared to stuff that up in his ideological crusade to shove as much pain and suffering on all those that DIDN"T cause the global meltdown.

As one commentator put it on Radio 5 'he is the prime minister for 90,000 square miles of the UK, not just the 1 square mile in the City of London'

You just want to open a sweatshop, don't you?

Yes we could still trade with other EU countries, we'd just have tariffs to contend with, like in the old days. I'm certain that all the exporters and importers of goods will be absolutely over the moon with that scenario and I also reckon the cost to our economy would eclipse whatever the City are squealing about

Thank God is what I reckon. The idea of handing over a huge chunk of our economic sovereignty to the ECB is an incredible one. It's not just the Tobin Tax, regardless of your stance on it- the offer on the table was unelected central banks and European commissioners telling us what our budget should look like, tax harmonisation...

De Gaulle used to talk of the "Europe des patries", strong nation-states working together in a spirit of respect and co-operation but having boundaries which shouldn't be crossed and maintaining their sovereignty. He'll be turning in his grave to see a man who claims to be a political heir doing this. And you know something is up when Sarkozy says that it'll be a series of bilateral treaties rather than through the EU- and that this is to avoid the need for referenda.

I suspect that Belgium and its ludicrous, expensive four-tier government system will not be affected.

We'd rejoin EFTA like Norway and Switzerland. But don't forget that our veto here keeps us in the EU- the treaties between the others will have to be intergovernmental rather than through the European Union.

What makes you think they'd want us?

They too will have seen Cameron's breast-beating, do you honestly believe they'd be happy with us trying to take our "rightful" seat at the head of the table?

Then we'd impose them too - especially on German cars. so, what's the problem?

Ask Nissan, Honda, Toyota, Land Rover/Jaguar and what's left of Ford & GM, they'd all be shutting up shop here and moving to a post-accession country in a flash

The devil is in the detail, transaction taxes are easy sells to people who don’t think too hard about what they are being sold, guff about casino banking etc only serves to obscure the picture. You shave a tiny amount off millions of daily transactions and you get huge sums of money, and the impact is tiny because it’s only a tiny amount taken each time, sounds tempting right? It sounds to good be true because it is too good to be true. Comparisons with stamp duty don’t hold up, stamp duty is a tax on a big ticket purchase, which the actual taxpayer only pays very occasionally, the financial transactions under consideration here are short-term one’s with very small margins, like overnight loans. So in practice it’s more like putting a penny in tax on a transaction that is only worth a few pence in profit. 0.05% per transaction sounds like nothing, but annualise that and it’s a big deal. Taking huge sums from any source is bound to have an impact, that is just common sense when you stand back from it and ask how exactly does that work? This is why some of these activities just aren’t viable if % shaved, because it’s not the face value of the transaction that matters, it’s the tiny margin that is actually getting slashed.

It will be interesting what happens now, will Eurozone financial centres really want to do this if London doesn’t? Will they make themselves less competitive when London’s pre-eminence is already a bugbear for many Eurozone financial sectors. The City of London was the cash cow in this part of the deal, does it look as good now that cream isn’t going to come sloshing their way?

Also the lack of fiscal sovereignty has been a major handicap for the weaker economies, Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, all couldn’t devalue currency when they needed too. Now they are going to be locked even more tightly into a Franco-German dominated economic policy? I suppose politically the Eurozone can now blame the UK for being selfish when they get to wherever the can stops this time round?

You guess.

Excellent article from the Economist on just how much of a personal failure for Cameron this is: www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/ ... n-and-eu-0 I think he made the right call last night, but his entire government thus far has been an exercise in backing himself into a corner where it was the only choice available. He's also managed to guarantee that in the economically liberal v naturally statist debate, the latter is the more likely winner. Nice one, numb nuts.

Excellent article from the Economist on just how much of a personal failure for Cameron this is: www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/ ... n-and-eu-0 I think he made the right call last night, but his entire government thus far has been an exercise in backing himself into a corner where it was the only choice available. He's also managed to guarantee that in the economically liberal v naturally statist debate, the latter is the more likely winner. Nice one, numb nuts.

It's assymetric. We'd have tariffs placed on a greater proportion of our exports than the Eurozone would (because it is a bigger market than we are alone). That's the advantage of being 'in' - strength in size, at the cost of some flexibility/sovereignity.