The final unwinding of the disastrous single currency could give Britain everything it wants from Europe.
As Karl Marx was one of the earliest to point out, economics (though so much less interesting) is far more important than politics.
Marx considered all political events as epiphenomena. He viewed great men as blind instruments of irresistible forces which they themselves could hardly comprehend.
The Marxist vision of society has been disproved many times, always at epic human cost. However, his doctrine that productive forces propel history has stood the test of time – and is invaluable for an understanding of the current predicament of the European Union.
It elegantly explains why European Monetary Union was destined to fail. The state socialists and former communists who invented the euro never got to grips with this aspect of Marxist thought. Only Conservatives with an intelligent appreciation of economics and history – an enlightened congregation that included Margaret Thatcher, Oliver Letwin, Peter Lilley, Tim Congdon, John Redwood, Nicholas Ridley and Alan Walters – grasped that the EMU would collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, and that it was folly to construct a single currency before the political conditions were in place.
Meanwhile the European elite who advocated the euro (British representatives included Michael Heseltine, Peter Mandelson, Tony Blair, Ken Clarke, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander, at the time only a cadet member of the European political class, so perhaps the chief secretary can be forgiven) ignored all warnings. Indeed, Lord Mandelson is still advocating British membership!
It is impossible to exaggerate the arrogance, the bone-headed stupidity and above all the brutality and callousness of these Europhiles. Their demented attempt to impose a new economic model on an unworkable political structure has already caused untold suffering. At the heart of their project is an audacious attempt to prove the primacy of politics over economics. Bear in mind that it is an experiment for which the European elite personally do not have to pay a price.
Their experiment has caused depression (not recession as inaccurately reported by pro-European journalists at the BBC and elsewhere) across much of Europe.
This is getting worse.