Toby on Tuesday 

‘Three truths…’

 

I joined UKIP in 2006, when it became clear that David Cameron intended to be a Conservative leader in the mould of Ted Heath. But until then I had been active in the Conservative Party during good times and bad. And from 1996 to 1999, while living in Richmond, I was William Hague’s Constituency Chairman, giving unfailing support when he became Party Leader in 1997 and for the two years afterwards. And the understanding with his supporters on which the campaign for his leadership was based was to rule out Britain’s entry into the euro for the duration of a Parliament, the most that he could have reasonably offered at the time.

Now, it is very easy to forget just how close William’s victory over Ken Clarke in 1997 was. In the first and second rounds of the ballot of MP’s, Ken Clarke had in fact been the winner. It was only in the final round that William came through to take the prize. Had Ken Clarke won, he would almost certainly have colluded with Tony Blair to bounce Britain into joining the euro and we would now be just one more bankrupt member of the failed Eurozone. On the rare occasions when I saw William after joining UKIP in 2006, he was always his affable self, no doubt looking at my defection as self-indulgence but never allowing it to affect his dry humour. So it was with great personal interest that I read his Daily Telegraph article last week on the Euro-crisis.

What he wrote was, “I remember being regarded as eccentric for doubting the euro project. Now it has proved to be a monumental error of judgment, analysis and leadership…In May 1998… I said that Joining the euro would exacerbate recession in some countries, and that some would find themselves trapped in a burning building with no exits – a phrase that brought me a fair amount of controversy and abuse…I was regarded around the EU as a rather eccentric figure, almost pitiable in being unable to see where the great sweep of history and prosperity was heading….There are three important truths for Eurozone leaders to recognize today…The first is that this crisis is not the fault of the Greek people…It is no good now expecting the Greeks to sit quietly in a burnt out room of the burning building I described seventeen years ago. This brings us to the second truth: that this is not a short term crisis, but a permanent one, in which any temporary accommodation will soon be overtaken by events… The third and final truth will be the hardest one of all for those responsible for the euro to accept: that this is not just about one country…the same tensions will ultimately surface in other nations facing a less immediate crisis but a similar prognosis…In future decades…I believe students will sit down to study the folly of extending a single currency too far. Sad though it will be to see it, their textbook is likely to say that the Greek debacle of 2015 was not the end of the euro crisis, but its real beginning.”

Released from the cares of office, William is now free to share his insights as never before. I well remember the open contempt in which he was held by the Clarkes, Heseltines, Howes, Blairs, Kinnocks and Ashdowns of this world, who should now all be hanging their heads in shame, just as I remember the dismissal of UKIP members as “fruitcakes and loonies”. But we can all be confident that events have wholly vindicated us. My hope now is that William will join that other former Conservative statesman, the great reforming Chancellor Nigel Lawson, and add his name to those campaigning for an “Out” vote in our Euro-referendum. To pay some £20 billion a year gross and £13 billion net, to open our borders to all comers and to hand our country over to the architects of the Eurozone – now that really is eccentric. Which is one thing that William, with his native Yorkshire shrewdness, never is, whatever the Eurofanatics might once have thought!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby