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By Lord Willoughby de Broke - 12th May 2011
Lord Willoughby de Broke argues that Alistair Darling's decision to join the European Financial Stability Mechanism was "weak and foolish."
If you were having dinner in a restaurant, how would you react on being asked to share the bill for champagne and caviar consumed at a neighbouring table? Disbelief and refusal would, I guess, be two of the milder choices. But that is exactly the position Britain may be forced into by the Labour chancellor Alistair Darling's weak and foolish agreement in May last year to tie us into the European Financial Stability Mechanism (EFSM).
Equally weak and foolish is our present chancellor's agreement to go along with this grotesque Euro-charade. Weak, foolish and almost certainly illegal, as both the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties specify that no country in the EU shall be liable for another country's debts – 'unless seriously threatened with difficulties caused by natural disasters or events beyond its control'. It would take heroic feats of mental gymnastics to assert that Greece, Ireland and Portugal's financial plight was due to natural disasters or events beyond their control. This Treaty Article was insisted upon by Germany in an attempt to avoid its prudent taxpayers being made responsible for the debts of the feckless 'Olive Oil Belt'. Well, guess what…
But it gets worse; the financial meltdown in Greece, Ireland and Portugal is a eurozone problem and must be solved by the members of the eurozone in whatever way they think best. Britain is not in the eurozone, is not consulted in its financial deliberations, and has absolutely no financial or political obligation to contribute to the bail-out of members of a club to which it does not belong.
Indeed, in January this year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the French President Nicolas Sarkozy was in full hubristic flow on the subject. He had this to say: "To those of you who would bet against the euro, watch out for your money… Mrs Merkel and I will never – do you hear me – never let the euro fail."
With that clear promise from the two most important members of the eurozone that they will stand behind its debts, George Osborne is surely now free to repudiate Alistair Darling's unwarranted and illegal commitment to the EFSM. It may not get the chancellor the choicest piece of bratwurst at the next euro-banquet – but who cares?
Lord Willoughby de Broke first entered the House of Lords in 1986. He is a member of the UK Independence Party.
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