WE reporters, like everybody else, have our little biases, political or otherwise. And they sometimes show, whether we like it or not.
It is more than six years since I revealed one of mine in, of all places, a sports complex in Grangemouth. This was where Scotland’s votes for the 2016 EU referendum were being tallied. And I was one of the journalists watching.
As late night turned to early morning, the result became clear. I realised that a prominent Leaver was smiling at me. This affable and magnanimous figure had reason to be amused. I was, it turned out, humming the Ode to Joy, the anthem of European unity.
This was, I suppose, unprofessional, juvenile even. It was also unconscious, like the worst of biases. Beethoven had outed me: I am, rather unoriginally, a Remainer. I don’t think I would have thought of myself that way until those wee small hours of June 24, 2016. Because, fool that I was, I just took “Europe” and its freedoms for granted. As did too many of us.
My mood sank that bright summer’s night in Grangemouth. So did Britain’s currency. The pound, remember, suffered its biggest single day collapse in history. Forex traders, it seemed, shared the sense of dread that hung in the air, like stale sweat, in that Grangemouth gym.
Exchange rates go up and down. But ours in recent years has been doing a lot more of the latter than the former. Sterling peaked at 1.72 euros in 2000. This week it fluttered around 1.15€.Our money is worth less, with all the consequences that brings, including more expensive food.
And yet – remarkably, given its recent instability – the shonky old British pound still has real political gravity, even among Scottish nationalists. And the euro remains a political bogeyman.
Why is this? What is it about the single currency that both Scottish and UK Remainers are so afraid of? So much so that, for more than a quarter of a century, they have run away from even having a discussion about its pros and cons. As a Beethoven-humming Europhile, I find this hard to understand.
We have just suffered another round of news stories saying an independent Scotland would be forced to adopt the euro if it wanted to rejoin the EU. And these tales have been – as usual – followed by Brussels-watchers explaining that the reality is more complicated: that committing to switching to the currency is not the same as actually doing so.
Don’t worry: I am not going to rehearse or reheat those tedious and unedifying old arguments. What interests me is the unspoken, unchallenged, underlying premise of the debate: which is that the euro is a bad thing.
Is it, though? Four out of five Europeans say it is good for the EU, according to Eurobarometer polling published last year.
Hostility to the single currency has real pedigree in UK politics. There is a reason why the national-chauvinists of UKIP adopted the £ sign as their logo.
Back in the late 1990s, when the Euroref was just twinkle in Nigel Farage’s eye, there was overwhelming public opposition to the then mooted European Monetary Union, or EMU.
Polls suggested that even many of those content with the single market wanted to keep the pound. Why? Well, surveys suggested that a big chunk block of voters were uncomfortable with ceding sovereignty to an overseas central bank. Fair enough. But did anyone challenge this test this perception, or challenge it in the heat of debate? No, not really.
Nobody – or at least nobody big – has ever had the moxie to champion the euro in the UK. And this has had consequences. We just did not have a proper debate about the currency when the rest of the EU did.
It’s worth recalling some history. There had been talk of a plebiscite on joining the EMU. Every UK party went in to the 1997 election saying they would not give up the pound without asking the people first.
Labour, of course, won a landslide, but then balked at the euro. Not, however, before Eurosceptics, with significant tabloid press backing, mobilised ahead of an expected vote that never materialised.
The populist right finessed some of the nationalist messaging it would unleash in 2016. One campaign hired a lad called Dominic Cummings. They then took the battlefield without even needing to fight.
Chancellor Gordon Brown had set five economic tests for EMU. They were so vague that it was falsely reported he and his sidekick Ed Balls had come up with them in the back of an American taxi. Yet they were not unreasonable sounding. The first, for example, asked if British business cycles, and therefore interest rates, could be permanently put in sync with the rest of Europe’s. But their effect – and, said critics, intent – was to shut down the debate, not inform it.
This was a shame. The question back under New Labour was a political one, not economic. I am oversimplifying but Mr Brown was asking whether our economy could fit with the Eurozone. But the better question was whether we wanted to make the changes necessary for it to do so.
There was a chance, a quarter of a century ago, for a real and properly difficult national conversation about what joining the euro would, could or should mean for Britain. Timid Remainers failed to take it. Our leaders made a choice without us.
The SNP is often (far from unfairly) equated with New Labour. The party of independence, just like Mr Brown and his frenemy, Tony Blair, in their day, can be very cautious about challenging public opinion. Over the years Yesser currency positions have been as weak and wobbly as, well, the pound itself. For a while now leading nationalists have been gingerly edging towards the euro. Will they have the nerve to get in to a proper discussion about the very real dilemmas this poses? We shall see. I know a good tune to whistle while we wait.
