Over the last few months we have seen a developing crisis over the EU’s Euro currency project. I couldn’t help noticing that when the crisis started to bite many Euro-sceptics were commenting that they thought that the Euro would be the death of the whole European Union project, but personally I thought there was good reason to wait and see. After all the Euro was never primarily an economic project, it was always a political project to drive the EU further down the route of becoming a single State. The crisis of the sort we have seen developing had the potential to be exactly what EUphiles needed to cause the Member States to stumble into yet further integration in order to redress the crisis.
The pattern that seems to now be emerging is that the members of the Euro Monetary Union are stumbling into an ever closer union of Euro-Zone within the EU and may emerge from the crisis with little residual sovereignty but with a large enough block vote to outvote all others within the EU. This thought is alarming enough in itself for any Euro-sceptic Englishman, but the further thought follows from that is what will the relationship between the Euro Monetary Union zone be with peripheral members of the EU who are not part of the zone.
This article is of interest in this context >>> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8881749/Dithering-over-euro-crisis-is-leaving-Britain-without-a-role-in-Europe.html
A possible comparison can here be drawn with the development of British rule in India prior to the Indian Mutiny. In a period from Clive’s crushing of the French challenge for supremacy in India up until the Mutiny there was a continual process of assimilation of states outside the core zone of British rule whenever the opportunity arose. It is not too much to say but for the shock of the Mutiny and the changes in policy which that caused, the net effect in due course would have been direct rule of all of what is now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Burma. I believe that we can expect a similar process to occur within the EU but by more clandestine means than was commonplace for 19th Century imperialism.
I notice that there is increasing concern about how the City will be regulated. If France and Germany are successful in undermining the special pre-eminence of the City of London, they will have dealt a devastating blow to what remains of the economy of the “UK”. There will be some transfer of activity to Paris and Frankfurt, but the primary effect will be to reduce the capacity for independent action by what remains of the UK governmental system.
The one politically encouraging possible side effect is that any serious damage done to the City will be the potential dramatic impact on the Conservative Party. In the run up to the General Election the Conservative Party had a war chest of £49 million, the overwhelming majority of which was donated by City businessmen. As the Conservative Party now has perhaps only 50,000 paid up members it is no longer a mass party and needs massive donations in order to maintain its position within the political system. It may be this thought, as much as the size of the back bench rebellion, which is propelling Cameron into being more proactive.
