14 april 2010, what part of "never" don't I understand ?

Wednesday 14th April 2010

With a majority conservative government still the most likely outcome of the british general election next month, their manifesto is worth a second look on europe. On the euro it seems clear: the party will “never take the UK into the euro”. I’ll be asking ken clarke about that next week. Manifesto commitments though come and go, not least with milton keynes’ dictum, “when the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? ...”. It bears out a consistent vision of staying in the eu, but one that looks much more like the (much less binding association of states) eea. Much of what the party aspires to is simply not do-able, as all other members states would need to agree and won’t. It’s also though relatively fuzzy, and would only lead to a breach if the party wanted one. The last thing a government in an excruciatingly difficult fiscal position will want is a fallout with the eu. On the contrary, in the coming years the eu may finally begin to appear as more of a solution, as it was in the 1970s. In the short term its new (2013) budget offers a boost; in the medium-term amplifying a weakened UK’s voice on the world stage; in the longer-term offering the crutch of a stable global-reserve currency to rely on...