The myth about monetary union
July 4th, 1990
A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 4th July 1990.
The Vice-President of the German Bundesbank said on the BBC Today Programme in February that “of course, a country which merges its currency completely cannot remain independent politically”.
These views are commonplace on the Continent, which is why monetary and economic union is seen as an immediate precursor to a United States of Europe. Mr Ridley has only exploded the myth that there is any halt between our agreeing to monetary union with the rest of the EEC and our complete loss of status as an independent nation.
Monetary union and political union are effectively inseparable and the Government’s foolish pushing of the idea of a hard ecu is merely one more attempt to fudge the issue and avoid a split in its own ranks.
Mrs Thatcher’s Cabinet should face the fact that the “unhappiness” expressed by commentators about Mr Ridley’s remarks is as nothing to the deep unhappiness felt by millions at the way a Government, faced merely with a barrage of words, rather than bombs as in 1940, cannot find the simple courage to say: “Whatever the rest of the Continent does, we will not take Britain down the road to political extinction.”