Do You Think Uk Will Ever Join The Euro?

[ToraToraTora]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30495230
Michael Mesuptime does! Personally I think it will collapse before we ever get round to joining.

[Hopkirk]

If we had to join a single currency, I would prefer the dollar.

[New Judge]

You seem to be confusing a few things, methyl.

The single currency has nothing at all to do with metrification. ("We should have finished the total Miles/Kilometers, Pound/Kilos and Pounds/Euros conversion in the 1970s.")

Leaving aside the fact that the euro was not launched until 1999, changing over to a different method of measuring weight and distance does not require any convergence of economies or fiscal policy. And the idea that travelling across the continent would be easier if only a single currency was in use was not the principle idea of the euro, it was simply a by-product. The money lost in those transactions (certainly that lost by individual travellers) is miniscule. As I'm sure you realise the main aim of the euro was to amalgamate the economies and fiscal policies of individual nation states to further enable centralisation and the progression of the "European Project" of full amalgamation into a single nation state.

To my eternal shame I too voted "yes" in the 1975 referendum. However it is quite clear now that, if the electorate was not misled then, things have changed so much that a new referendum is now needed. A glance at the government's pamphlet from that referendum will demonstrate why:

http://www.harvard-digital.co.uk/euro/pamphlet.htm#11

Among the salient points:

"No important new policy can be decided in Brussels or anywhere else without the consent of a British Minister answerable to a British Government and British Parliament."

Clearly no longer true.

"The Minister representing Britain can veto any proposal for a new law or a new tax if he considers it to be against British interests"

Clearly no longer true.

I wish you well if you decide to up sticks. You should bear in mind that if the UK does decide to depart, by the time it does so the euro will almost certainly no longer exist in its current form, the economies of the current eurozone nations (even some of the larger ones) will have declined considerably further by then, and you (and your money) will be resident in a moribund over-regulated declining bloc.

[BlackadderV]

Heseltine? The last of the Heathites? Dream on, boy.

[New Judge]

"...dealing with the USA in US Dollars. Too volatile aand liable to collapse for me."

How about a little wager on which currency will collapse first, the US Dollar, the Pound or the euro?

[dannyk13]

How would joining the Euro affect any future decision to pull out of the EU?

[New Judge]

I don't think anyone suggests that it will, danny. However, should the UK adopt the euro it will require a far greater committment to the EU than the electorate currently seems to have the stomach for. It would be that committment rather than the euro itself that might make the UK resistant to leaving.

Even if the UK decided today to leave it would take some time and I suggest that the euro in its current form will have ceased to exist by then. There may in future be more than one "common currency" (if that makes sense) but the idea of one currency embracing the entire EU is not and never has been a remote possibility whilst the EU is set up as it is. The smaller euro nations, and even some of the larger ones (particularly France and Italy), are now realising that and it is only the vanity of politicians which is holding the entire thing together. They refuse to let it go, but market forces - and the resistance of some of the indebted nations to the measures needed to allow them to continue using the euro - will eventually prevail.

[janbee]

What would the benefits be? As far as I can see, none ! Just like the EU itself, no benefits to our being members of this corrupt club.