The Euro Debate: Decision and Indecision. Autumn 2002

While Britain remains ambivalent on the outside our Continental cousins are passing around their Euros without seemingly much disruption to the daily flow of commerce and trade. Holidaymakers have now tasted the Euro in action, and the novelty of passing around the 'funny money' has ceased.
Our great Euro debate in the UK though, for most ordinary Britons, has only just started, and already many have stood aside after being bombarded with contradictory facts, figures, doomsday scenarios and optimistic forecasts. Listening to the radio, one pundit presented an argument that I have never previously entertained, namely, being unsure he will place his trust in the Prime Minister and vote yes when the referendum comes. Blimey! That never struck me before. Trust the PM because he knows what he's talking about. I've always considered his views on par with a second-hand car salesman - take it with a pinch of salt. It simply never occurred to me - and no doubt to you too - to follow his advice blindly. His opinion should be the first to discard.
And rightly so, it's been over 700 years since Francis Bacon pronounced, 'Cease to be ruled by dogmas and authorities. Look at the world!' Lets not turn the clock back to pre-feudal thought.
But when it comes to vanguard voices on the Euro there really isn't much out there to take on board without also scoping up a big dollop of confusion. Forget any certainty in ideology; the Left are just as likely to be for it as the Right are against it, and vice versa.
Stalwarts of the anti-EU eighties Left can still be found in the British sovereign parliament Benn persuasion, but most, like the Mayor of London Ken Livingston, are now fervent pro-EU converts.
The trade union movement contains its long-standing pro advocates such as Bill Morris and John Edmonds, but it remains to be seen whether the New Angry Brigade of officials will be quite as zealous. For these it really will be a personal battle between entrenched pro-working class ideology and the economic considerations of their own sectional membership. Even for the Morris' and Edmunds' there is obvious doubt, with the TUC just recently passing a motion at their conference calling on the government to keep to NHS spending plans in the advent of entry to the Euro.
The remnants of the Marxist Left, huddled around the moribund Socialist Alliance, are split between the anti and abstainer camps, with the latter group arguing for an 'above the capitalist fray' line.
As for the Conservative Party, their leadership seem more attracted to pacifying their rabid right element than with paying attention to economic arguments and listening to their traditional allies in the CBI. For a party so desperate for power, if public opinion swings to a big majority in favour, then they may well correspondingly change tract to keep in favour with the electorate so as to be on the winning side.
Even the centre ground isn't looking so firm, with arch-Liberal David Owen voicing his scepticism based upon the nations experience in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism that ended so disastrously for the UK in 1992.
On a side note, the Euro may well achieve the impossible by uniting Northern Irelands continuously warring tribes, with Sinn Fein, the DUP, UUP and the PUP all likely to push for a no vote.
The pro-Euro campaign will be inevitably fully financed, and unlike the 1975 EEC referendum fiasco, the anti's will be equally matched with funding and organisational flare, and who will also no doubt be thankful for the absence of street politics that so characterised much of the landscape in the mid-70s.
This referendum will be primarily fought in the media, not the hustling, and with it will come the prism of distortion that such a medium brings.
And so the panoramic view of the debate comes back full circle to the Prime Minister, an experienced statesman on the European stage, a man who is adverse to listening to all sides of an argument, but when the time comes is prepared to show steadfast leadership in the interests of the common good. So if in doubt trust the PM? No fear! If in doubt divide the dartboard between evens/pro, odds/anti; and place your trust in a blind throw.