Time for Britain to join the euro?

The Guardian ^

[KingJaja]

"Is it a debate for now?" asked Nick Clegg, Lib Dem leader and ex-MEP, of British entry to the euro. "No. I think it's off the radar screen," he said at his party's annual conference this week. Like Gordon Brown, he gave the stock response to the decade-long question: "We'll join when the time is right."

Even in this era of wild currency fluctuations and financial meltdown, there's no appetite in Britain for joining the single currency. But, in Nice last weekend for the informal meeting of EU finance ministers and a heavyweight conference on financial supervision organised by thinktank Eurofi, there was the exotic whiff of an amuse-bouche.

At a crowded pre-dinner cocktail of champagne and canapes in a hotel on the Promenade des Anglais, a senior British (Labour) MEP suggested, in all seriousness, that the economic downturn in Britain would be so protracted and the slump in the pound so profound that the next government would take steps to join the euro.

[bruinbirdman]

"We'll join when the time is right."

With the pound at historic lows to the euro, the time is deffinitely not right. Unfortunately, or fortunately for UK patriots, the time won't be right until EUrotopia collapses.

EUSSR already has UK sovereignty from the Lisbon Treaty/Constitution, why take on the sinking sterling?

yitbos

[Caipirabob]

Our British friends need to help themselves where they can. Our leaders have killed the "Golden Goose" and I don't see much help going their way for the next few years. Hopefully they can score a good deal, but I think the EU leaders are going to "punish" them for earlier resistance.

[agere_contra]

We’re not going to be joining the Euro. The Labour govt and the EU are about as popular as Pelosi is in America.

[expatguy]

Maybe England needs a "crisis" to force their hand.

Works in the USS of A