'It's simple, fun, sexy - and the rest of Europe's going potty with excitement', burbled the front page of the UK tabloid the Mirror on 3 January 2002, about the introduction of the euro currency on new year's day. Well, the pantomime season's still on - so all together now: 'Oh no it's not!'
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For any Brit who has ever tried to work out what 10 lire is actually worth, the euro might seem simple. Unless you have won the lottery, how a load of coins, notes and symbols can be described as 'fun' and 'sexy' is perplexing. As for excitement - the discussion about the euro in the UK makes dishwater look interesting.
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There is really very little to say about the euro. Which makes the Mirror's breathless hype as bizarre as the gloomy scepticism of its right-wing rival the Sun. Europe's skies might have lit up with euro-symbol fireworks on new year's eve - but for the rest of us, in the UK or on the Continent, nothing about this currency is going to set the world on fire.
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There are two 'European issues'. One is what is going on in Europe. The other has relatively little to do with Europe, and is about domestic politics.
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On Europe itself: there is the principle of whether there should be a more integrated Europe, which could be pretty sensible. There is the practicality of how Europe should be integrated - one road network, one currency, and so on - which also could be sensible. From a democratic point of view, the institutions of the European Union, such as the European Parliament and the European Court of Justice, give more cause for concern. There is also the issue of the European Court of Human Rights, which, while not an EU institution, raises similar questions to do with democracy.
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 | | The British public is not going to go to war over the pound |
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This is not because, as the Little Englanders would claim, these institutions fail to represent competing concerns of different national electorates. It is because, with participation in national elections plummeting and participation in European elections never getting off the ground in the first place, these institutions seem to represent officials and bureaucrats, and the will of no people at all.
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Yet the discussion about what is going on in Europe is, by and large, pretty dull. The big news about the euro's launch on the Continent was that it was barely newsworthy. Apart from Austria's cashpoint crisis, there were few hassles, tantrums, or collapsing banks. Some small shops had a slight problem with retaining enough euros to give change to their customers - but no doubt that was only because of the influx of UK journalists, despatched everywhere from Seville to Leeds to report on how it felt to shop with euros. Nothing to say about E-day? My point exactly.
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Those journalists left in the UK were left to play the game of hunt-the-sceptic - unearthing those oddball characters standing next to their red, white and blue pound signs bleating unconvincingly about the moral, historical, economic, emotional, whatever importance of the pound. We never see their audience - could it be because they don't have one? There is a persistent myth that the British public really really cares about its currency, which fails to recognise that opinion polls do not record a shrug of the shoulders. Apart from the stroppy greengrocer here and the confused old lady there, the British public is not going to go to war over the pound.
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So why does the Europe question cause the UK government such trauma? For Blair, Brown and co, the issue is less about Europe than about their own isolation and insecurity. The political elite fears that any decision the UK public will take on Europe will reflect the electorate's dissatisfaction with, or lack of engagement with, their government here in Britain. That's why, despite the government's pro-Europe leanings, it fights shy of putting up a decent fight.
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Following the launch of the euro into Europe, UK Europe minister Peter Hain claimed that Britain's membership of the single currency was now inevitable. In less than 24 hours, UK foreign secretary Jack Straw had slapped him down, and demanded that people 'calm down' about the issue. This panicking in the face of no excitement indicates the extent of the government's trepidation.
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| | The fear gripping the political elite is not about the euro |
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The UK government blathers about the need for a referendum (let the People decide) after the UK economy has met chancellor Gordon Brown's five 'economic tests' (let external forces decide), and consistently backtracks from making any definitive statements itself about why it thinks the euro is A Good Thing. Having failed to show any courage of any convictions on the Europe question, it panics about the fact that a lukewarm British public might make the wrong decision - and so puts off decision day yet further.
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All this obfuscation masks the fact that the fear gripping the political elite is not really about what the people think of the euro, but about what the people think of their own government. Which is a far more pressing issue than the kind of coins we have in our pockets.
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At a time of falling voter turnout and evident uninterest in parliament and politics, the UK government is terrified of putting itself on the line. It's not that the government is worried about beating the Tories, so much as that it fears exposing itself to the electorate's more general disdain for the political class. Any vote on Europe would be read as a vote about the UK government - because whatever people think (or not) about European integration, they know that it is something their government eventually wants to do. Should a sizeable group of people vote against the euro - or, more likely, not vote at all - this will be seen as an expression of contempt for their political leaders.
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In the absence of any strong opposition to entering the single currency, had the government put a strong case for the euro in Britain, it would probably have had the argument in the bag. But having ducked and dithered, the government now knows that nobody is convinced one way or the other - and it has not the slightest clue how to convince them.
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In this sense, the shiny new euro mirrors the government's own, very home-based, insecurity. And it's not a pretty sight.
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Read on:
10 things I hate about EU, by Jennie Bristow
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