More than ten prominent “scaremongering” figures who are warning Britain against leaving the EU were marked out for criticism for their warnings about Britain’s failure to join the euro.
Lord King of Lothbury, the former Bank of England governor, and Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, pointed out this week that the credibility of many key In campaigners had been damaged because of their past support for joining the eurozone, an idea now widely discredited.
“Why on earth should we listen to them?” asked Lord King. Mr Johnson said: “The people now issuing the bloodcurdling warnings against Brexit are often the very same . . . as the people who prophesied disaster if Britain failed to join the euro. In fact, the opposite turned out to be true.”
A pro-Brexit cabinet minister and MPs from different parties also raised concerns last night about former pro-euro campaigners who were playing a vocal role in the present British debate on the EU.
Lord Mandelson, Lord Heseltine, Ken Clarke, Nick Clegg and seven other key Europhiles who are arguing for Britain to remain in the bloc were censured in a 2011 report that attacked the reasoning and tactics deployed by the pro-euro campaign in the early 2000s. The Centre for Policy Studies pamphlet, entitled Guilty Men, by Peter Oborne and Frances Weaver, accused British advocates of the single currency of producing “errors” and “falsehoods” during the campaign.
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Chris Grayling, the leader of the Commons, who has joined the Vote Leave campaign, said: “Those campaigning to keep us in the EU made similar doom-laden predictions about the British economy if we didn’t scrap the pound . . . They were wrong then and they are wrong now.”
David Davis, a fellow Tory MP who is campaigning to leave the EU with the Grassroots Out camp, added: “The euro is now self-evidently disastrous for at least half the people in it. It would have been disastrous for us and a continued future in a federal Europe would be equally disastrous.” He said that the public should reflect on the accuracy and judgment of the In campaigners who also promoted Britain joining both the euro and Schengen, the open borders agreement between 26 European nations that is about to be suspended over the migrant crisis.
The Labour MP Kate Hoey said: “Thank goodness we ignored their poor advice a decade ago. These men are all so EU-blinkered that we cannot trust their judgment.”
A spokesman for Britain Stronger in Europe, the cross-party In campaign, said: “Our campaign is clear that Britain should never join the euro — and our chairman, Stuart Rose, argued against it at the time. But the euro is not on the ballot paper. The prime minister’s renegotiation has ensured that Britain can never be forced to adopt the single currency.”
The Europhiles
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What they said in support of Britain joining the euro in the early 2000s and what they say now in favour of our membership of the EU:
Kenneth Clarke
Then “A striden and unrepresentative minority has succeeded in appropriating the debate over a single currency. Its alarmist campaigning against the euro has increased the risk that Britain could fall down the slippery steps from the heart of Europe to being the outcast of Europe.”
Now “Britain’s political voice depends on our role as a leading and influential member of the EU. If we leave, we are of less value to our allies and of less concern to our enemies.”
Alan Johnson
Then “Unlike the Tories, we recognise the potential benefits of euro membership for our manufacturing exporters, which is why we support the single currency in principle.”
Now “For UK manufacturing jobs, our EU membership is absolutely critical. Two thirds of British jobs in manufacturing are dependent on demand from Europe. That’s two thirds of our manufacturing base reliant on that single market access and Britain’s membership of the EU.”
Lord Mandelson
Then “Highly mobile global investors [will] take long-term decisions based on their desire to locate at the heart of Europe’s eurozone rather than on its borders.”
Now “Our economy depends on the 500 million consumer market — the biggest of its kind in the world — created and safeguarded by the EU. Our manufacturers, big and small, depend on access to Europe, its supply chains and production networks.”
Lord Heseltine
Then “If we do not join the euro we would surrender the agenda to the Franco-German alliance. We have got to explain that the power of the nation state has been taken away by supra-national arrangements. In 100 years, Europe will be seen as a role model of how to manage in the new global environment.”
Now Brexit would “blow away the safeguards for our financial services industry that the prime minister has just secured. That is to risk countless jobs across our country from Edinburgh in the north to Bournemouth in the south and, of course, London itself.”
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Nick Clegg
Then “If we remain outside the euro, we will simply continue to subside into a position of relative poverty and inefficiency compared to our more prosperous European neighbours.”
Now “Not just one but two unions now hang in the balance. If we vote to leave the EU, I have no doubt that the SNP will gleefully grab the opportunity to persuade the people of Scotland to leave the UK as well. Do we want our children and grandchildren to live in a once-great country now pulled apart? A Great Britain turned into a little England, drifting friendlessly somewhere in the mid-Atlantic?”