The Economist gets a fit of the Euro wobbles

Both the Charlamagne and Bagheot columns in the current edition of the Economist will make pretty stark reading for the Euro elite as they tumble out of their armour-plated limos on the Rue de la Loi.

Charlamagne is pretty pointed about how the Frankenreich's attempot to drive forward a new European economic deal could destroy more than it buiilds, calling the planned new construct,

The divisiveness pact


Plans for closer economic integration in the euro zone could cause trouble

It goes on to satirise the plans as,

 Mrs Merkel has struck a Faustian bargain with France’s Nicolas Sarkozy. He does not care for her economic medicine, but wants a euro-zone “economic government” to restore lost French influence (one senior Eurocrat remarks that France needs Germany to disguise its weakness, and Germany needs France to disguise its strength).

Perhaps, it asks,

the aim was never competitiveness, but rather the political appeal of a pact. Solemn yearly pledges from leaders are easier to sell than the commission’s bureaucratic process.

Glad to see that the column has woken up to that one.

Bageot meanwhile even rises the spectre of Britrain leaving the EU. Cameron has never liked 'banging on about Europe'. But with the seriousness of the situation and the truth dawning on the Btritish public of the paramount importance of the EU in day to day life in the UK he cannot continue to brush it under the carpet. Labour are waking up to the whole issue of our relations with the EU and its capability of destabilising both the coalition in general and the Tory party in particular.

The apparant rise of UKIP in the polls is the least of his troubles, despite more and more Tory backbenchers starting to have that queasy electoral feeling.

there is a non-trivial chance that Britain might fall out of the EU one day

He says. Of course his scenmario is one of gloom and doom, but it is being slated as a distinct possibility. Europe is back on the agenda, and it will not go away,

The EU is evolving unpredictably. Beyond the euro crisis, the Lisbon treaty has given new powers to the European Parliament, a maddening assembly addicted to regulation and public spending. The European Court of Justice is ever more activist, handing down rulings that enrage British public opinion. At the very same time, today’s parliamentary Conservative Party is the most sceptical ever. The 2010 intake, in particular, “just find Europe nauseating”, says an MP, himself deeply Eurosceptic. Most newspapers are implacably hostile. To appease such forces while avoiding rifts inside the coalition, Mr Cameron’s government has ended up in a defensive crouch. Fatally, European decisions end up being judged against the sole yardstick of sovereignty, rather than that of Britain’s interests.


Ministers are worried and should be. Tory MPs, the press and voters already imagine Britain to be powerless in the face of EU diktats. Now Britain risks a real loss of influence—and the government is unwilling to do very much about it. How, plausibly, does this end well?