By: CHRIS GRAEME
THE UNITED Kingdom is unlikely to adopt the Euro currency any time soon unless its economy plummets below that of the other key member states.
This was the view of Alex Ellis, British Ambassador to Portugal, in a keynote luncheon speech on the United Kingdom and Europe at the Hotel Palácio Real in Lisbon on Friday.
Ambassador Ellis predicted that the British would “continue to prefer policies to institutions”, both at a national and European level.
“I very much doubt we will join the Euro unless growth and unemployment in the UK are worse than in the Euro zone, which has not been the case until now,” he said.
However, despite the British phobia over being swallowed up and controlled by Europe, Alex Ellis said the British would continue to be “surprisingly integrationalist.”
“I think we will always resist the ‘either or approach’ to politics – that is to say either Europe or the United States.”
In effect he said Britain would continue to use its strategic position between Europe and America by sitting on the fence, as it had done through most of its history.
The ambassador highlighted five key elements in Britain’s relationship to Europe, which explained its schizophrenic attitude to the continent, the EU and Brussels.
“Britons are indifferent to Europe. In the last general election opinion polls suggested that only two per cent of the electorate in the UK thought the EU was the most important issue, way behind such issues as crime and economy. Europe is not a salient issue in the European economic debate,” he said.
Although there was quite a lot of hostility to the EU in the UK with regards to institutions, there was support for policies.
“Usually when you ask a Brit if they like institutions they say ‘no’, but when asked if they like a policy they say ‘yes’ and that is probably true of many other countries as well,” he said.
But what did the British know of Europe? They travelled in it a great deal, 2.5 million visited Portugal annually, 100,000 lived here, 60 per cent of UK exports went to the EU, the British didn’t speak European languages and its ignorance about the EU was pretty high.
“We are surprisingly integrationalist: on energy policy, greenhouse emissions, environmental issues, free movement of workers and sending troops to hotspot areas in Europe.”
“We are a surprisingly unconfident country and see the devil in every bit of detail, the fat end of the thin wedge, we worry all the time that we are being led into something that we can’t control,” he said.
The British consume European policies greedily, love cheap travel and telephone calls and have been the second largest net contributor in terms of cash to the EU budget over time.
So why do they seemingly dislike the EU? It all boils down to history and fear of invasion – 1066 and all that.
The British entry into the EEC, later the EU, was seen as an act of “humiliation not of triumph.”
“Quite a lot of people in Britain, rightly or wrongly think they have a choice. They think they don’t have to be a part of this. There is not the same feeling of popular commitment to the EU as there is in other parts of Europe,” he said.
The British generally disliked all politicians and all institutions, even its own, partly because of the press and partly because they don’t like compromise.
Yet they defined sovereignty through institutions such as the Queen, parliament and the courts, whereas in France sovereignty meant culture and language.
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