Political parties shown bankrupt
September 17th, 1992
A letter to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph which was published on 17th September 1992.
The present sterling crisis is more than the currency crisis which commentators are describing it as. It is, in fact, the symptom of the bankruptcy of the present political class to understand, let alone do anything about, the real economic needs of our country.
The leaderships of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal-Democrat Parties are at one in upholding the Government’s strategy – if such it can be called – of maintaining Britain in the ERM and ratifying its political analogue, the Maastricht Treaty.
In fact, the only opposition to the Government comes from those who have been calling for a complete change in European policy away from tighter union and towards an open trading system with both Europa and the wider world.
The way out of the current slump in Britain is not through an artificial consumer-led recovery, on which, until today Mr Major and Mr Lamont have pinned their hopes, but through an all-out export drive by the manufacturing industry, triggered by a floating down of the pount to around its real value in the world, namely 2.5 Dm and $1.6.
But, of course, this is a real economy argument not a City argument which is all this Government seems to understand.