Even Francophile Conservatives now want Britain to go it alone. But it's not the euro that's holding us back: it's the government
According to Greek mythology, Cerberus was the many-headed hound that stood at the gates of Hades, the underworld. Feeding the hound of hell was a thankless task. He always wanted more. Hence the expression "a sop to Cerberus", meaning a futile gift of a morsel that only leaves the hound baying for more.
I am not suggesting for one moment that Ukip or the Tory party are dogs. But the expression "a sop to Cerberus" – much favoured by my classics master in days gone by – does keep coming to mind, with our beleaguered prime minister in the increasingly frustrating position of delivering the sops.
Mythical history does not relate whether there are also pigeons at the gates of Hades. But if there are, my old friend Lord Lawson has certainly thrown a cat among them with his Ukip-style call for us to leave the European Union altogether – he who himself lives a fair proportion of the year in la belle France.
Lawson likes the way of life in France. So do many of us, who seize every opportunity to relish it – unlike, it seems from recent opinion polls, the French themselves, who are not as content as we thought.
It was admiration for the standards of the French and other European health systems that prompted New Labour to devote a fair proportion of the budget to modernising our own NHS. Further back, envy of what was perceived as superior economic performance was one of the main reasons why our nation applied to join what was then the Common Market.
Whether they vote Conservative, Labour or otherwise, the British people are fundamentally conservative. In the 1975 referendum they always seemed likely to vote to stay in, rather than take a leap outside. And, whatever the opinion polls show now, I suspect that if this new proposed referendum ever takes place, there will once again be a vote for staying in. But what a lot of time would be wasted meanwhile!
As older readers will know, I have always regarded the EU, for all its irritations, as what the authors of 1066 and All That would have described as a Good Thing. But the eurozone was a step too far, and it is to the credit of John Major that we "opted out" and to the credit of Gordon Brown that Tony Blair's pressure to join was resisted.
The ultimate irony was the spectacle last week of David Cameron, in his capacity as this year's chairman of the G8, representing the EU in early discussions with President Obama about a proposed free trade area with the US, while back home his MPs and even ministers were calling for our complete withdrawal from the EU.
As the president reminded Cameron, it is in the UK's best interests to remain in the EU. He could have added that membership of the EU and exemption from the eurozone gives us the best combination.
Freedom from the constraints of the single currency has enabled us to secure a devaluation that, according to the latest estimates from the Office for Budget Responsibility, produced a gain in net trade (exports minus imports) equivalent to 2% of GDP between the fourth quarter of 2007 and the fourth quarter of 2010. Recent figures have not been so good, but have been distorted by the vagaries of production of North Sea oil. The governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King, pointed out last week that since 2007 and the devaluation, the trade deficit (excluding North Sea oil) has averaged 1.5% of GDP compared with 3% before.
Such exchange rate adjustments have not been available to the suffering southern states of the eurozone vis-a-vis super-competitive Germany. Nor, for that matter, have they been available to France. Moreover, the weaker eurozone economies have been further debilitated by austerity programmes that derive partly from the Teutonic belief that suffering does lesser economies good and partly from the way the bond markets panicked until Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, promised to do "whatever it takes" to keep the show on the road.
The bond markets have now woken up to the deficiencies of the austerity model. The fundamental flaws of the way the policy operates in the eurozone are well explained in the latest weekly comment from Russell Jones and John Llewellyn of Llewellyn Consulting. Coming from analysts who, unusually for this country, have been broadly friendly towards the eurozone project, their questioning of the long-term sustainability of the eurozone, on account of the asymmetrical way the rules operate, ought to be taken seriously in Berlin and Frankfurt.
What makes the British economic situation so frustrating is that we are not subject to the deflationary bias of the eurozone: George Osborne and his pals have simply imposed one of their own, inventing imaginary threats from the bond markets.
The cuts in social security have been especially severe for the poorest in our society. Yet, as the Child Poverty Action Group points out, the poorest spend a larger proportion of their income than other groups, and the cuts have multiplier effects that hardly encourage that elusive recovery. The cuts are not only damaging in themselves: they are what Tim Nicholls of CPAG calls a "fiscal hindrance" to economic recovery.
What a convenient diversion from the damage caused by the chancellor's economic strategy all this nonsense about leaving the EU is.
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