The lamps are going out all over Europe... if we let them

 By pguedes

Researching Victorian Ireland over the last few days, and the campaign for home rule, I stumbled upon a fascinating document – the first petition for Irish home rule in May 1870.

What made it so revolutionary was that two thirds of the signatories were protestants and most of them – including my great-great-grandfather – were Conservatives.

“The attempt to assert consolidation on the Irish people, to destroy their individuality, has been simply disastrous,” they wrote. The Irish parliament had been abolished within living memory. Such things are simply disastrous.

I was reminded of this reading the newspapers this morning about the deal that has been struck to save the euro. It is similarly ‘simply disastrous’, and for precisely the same reason – it will “exert consolidation” on the people of Europe.

We have always argued that there is no way that a single interest rate can possibly suit the diversity of Europe. To suggest otherwise is kind of gold standard thinking, as if currency values were objective, totemic and God-given. 

Sure enough, the outlying nations of Europe found their exports unaffordable, and became seriously in debt. The only glimmer of light for them was the ability to break the fiscal rules and borrow. Now that loophole is going to be closed to them.

It is hard to overstate the disaster that this represents, pretending that everyone in Europe is the same and requires the same interest rate - that is bad enough. But now this false belief will be enforced by a cadre of technocrats even more powerful than before.

This will leave those people unfortunate enough to be at the margins of the euro, and with no currency or currencies of their own, dangerously prey to far right nationalism. 

It will happen just as the banks are being urged by their governments to hoard money for fear of a euro default. It is 1931 all over again, and we know where that led.

I am a fellow of nef, and have been for a quarter of a century, because I am an optimist. I believe that optimism is more powerful than pessimism, and I remain optimistic, but the new fiscal rules for the euro are capable of damping anyone’s optimism.

What we must work towards is the urgent multiplication of new forms of exchange across the continent, as soon as possible, to meet people’s economic needs. 

Not everyone can afford gold; fewer people will be able to afford the euro. So our mission has to be to provide them with exchange mechanisms they can use, and which are on the side of life against technocracy.