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By Cal Thomas
One of many things left out of the film "The Iron Lady" was Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's warnings on the effects a single currency would have on the economies of European nations. Thatcher's premonitions place her among the great political prophets of all time.
On the single currency, Peter Oborne, a columnist for the
The idea of a
How can a European "E Pluribus Unum" be forged out of that?
Knight wrote last month, "Unfortunately for Spain, it shares a currency with Germany. That means Spain can no longer simply devalue the peseta -- something that would automatically make its workers cheaper and more competitive in the world. There is no peseta to devalue."
As columnist William Rees-Mogg wrote last Friday in The Times, "So far as British opinion goes, Europe is seen as a cost to be borne rather than a loyalty to be cherished."
After all this, the "conservative" British government, still ignoring Thatcher's warnings, is proposing a referendum that, if approved by voters, would move Britain closer to the
Are they mad? Why would Britain want to associate itself with governments and economies (and people) that have behaved so irresponsibly? During the Cold War, Britain did not try to integrate its economy with that of the Soviet Union. In Europe, union has not brought unity, nor can it. Does Britain want to share more of the continent's misery, or should it try instead to point its people and the eurozone states to real change with freer and more empowered individuals, not government, leading the way?
Again, Margaret Thatcher was right when she said, "A democratic Europe of nation states could be a force for liberty, enterprise and open trade. But, if creating a United States of Europe overrides these goals, the new Europe will be one of subsidy and protection."
Most profoundly, Thatcher warned, "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels."
That is precisely the seductive siren call the "conservative" British government now hears. It is a call, that, if answered "yes" by voters will wreck Britain's struggling economy and potentially cause it to go down the drain along with most of the other economies on the continent.
Today's politicians can't pretend they were not warned.
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