In this week's Spectator: The great euro swindle
Peter Oborne 12:08pm
Very rarely in political history has any faction or movement enjoyed such a complete and crushing victory as the Conservative Eurosceptics. The field is theirs. They were not merely right about the
single currency, the greatest economic issue of our age — they were right for the right reasons. They foresaw with lucid, prophetic accuracy exactly how and why the euro would bring with it
financial devastation and social collapse.
Meanwhile the pro-Europeans find themselves in the same situation as appeasers in 1940, or communists after the fall of the Berlin Wall. They are utterly busted. Let’s examine the case of the
Financial Times, which claims to be Britain’s premier economic publication. About 25 years ago something went very wrong with the FT. It ceased to be the dry, rigorous journal of economic
record that was so respected under its great postwar editor Sir Gordon Newton.
Turning its back on its readers, it was captured by a clique of left-wing journalists. An early sign that something was going wrong came when the FT came out against the Falklands invasion.
Naturally it supported Britain’s entry to the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1990. In 1992, under the slow-witted editorship of Richard Lambert (in a later incarnation, as director general of the
Confederation of British Industry, Sir Richard was to become one of the most sycophantic apologists for Gordon Brown’s premiership), it endorsed Neil Kinnock as prime minister. It has been
wrong on every single major economic judgment over the past quarter century.
The central historical error of the modern Financial Times concerns the euro. The FT flung itself headlong into the pro-euro camp, embracing the cause with an almost religious passion. Doubts were
dismissed. Here is the paper’s supposedly sceptical and contrarian Lex column on 8 January 2001, on the subject of Greek entry to the eurozone. ‘With Greece now trading in euros,’
reflected Lex, ‘few will mourn the death of the drachma. Membership of the eurozone offers the prospect of long-term economic stability.’ The FT offered a similar warm welcome to
Ireland.
The paper waged a vendetta against those who warned that the euro would not work. Its chief political columnist Philip Stephens consistently mocked the Eurosceptics. ‘Immaturity is the kind
explanation,’ sneered Stephens as Tory leader William Hague came out against the single currency.
Even as late as May 2008, when the fatal booms in Ireland and elsewhere were very obviously beginning to falter, the paper retained its faith: ‘European monetary union is a bumble bee that
has taken flight,’ asserted the newspaper’s leader column. ‘However improbable the celestial design, it has succeeded in real life.’ For a paper with the FT’s
pretensions to authority in financial matters, its coverage of the single currency can be regarded as nothing short of a disaster.
Just as bad was the CBI, whose claims to represent British industry as a whole have always been dubious at best. By the mid-1990s a small clique of large corporations were firmly in control, and
they had the director general they wanted in the shape of the impeccably well connected Adair (now Lord) Turner, later to become chairman of the disastrous Financial Services Authority and chairman
of the Government’s Committee on Climate Change. Few pieces of conventional wisdom are ever too conventional for Lord Turner. His corporate bosses (Niall FitzGerald of Unilever, David Simon
of BP, British Airways’ Colin Marshall) claimed that an overwhelming majority of British businessmen backed the single currency — a vital propaganda tool for pro-euro campaigners. The
figures used to support these claims were, however, very flimsy indeed: they could only be sustained by ignoring the views of small businessmen, and in due course they were exposed — a
crucial early defeat for the pro-euro cause.
Now let’s turn to the BBC. In our Centre for Policy Studies pamphlet, Guilty Men, we expose in detail how the BBC betrayed its charter commitment, lost its sense of fair-mindedness and became
in effect a partisan player in a great national debate — all the more insidious because of its pretence at neutrality.
There is only space here to deal with a small amount of our evidence, but this is one example of BBC bias. In the nine weeks leading to 21 July 2000, when the argument over the euro was at its
height, the Today programme featured 121 speakers on the topic. Some 87 were pro-euro compared to 34 who were anti. The case for the euro was represented by twice as many figures, interviews and
soundbites as the case against. BBC broadcasters tended to present the pro-euro position itself as centre ground, thus defining even moderately Eurosceptic voices as extreme, meaning that they were
defeated even before they had entered the debate.
But this was not the worst of the unfairness. The Eurosceptics were too rarely given time to state their reasons for favouring sterling. Their position was too often covered through a paradigm of
deep, ‘explosive’, splits within the Conservative party rather than the merits of the policy argument. Again and again the BBC would lead its news coverage on scare stories that failure
to join the euro would lead to economic or industrial disaster. When those reports turned out to be false, it failed to correct them. In fact Britain was enjoying record levels of foreign
investment: but when Office for National Statistics figures showed this, the BBC made very little of it.
This is not to say that the BBC was consciously biased. It was simply that the high-minded attitudes of many BBC reporters and producers meshed only too well with the pressure groups. But this bias
went very deep indeed. As Rod Liddle, then editor of the Radio 4’s Today programme, said: ‘The whole ethos of the BBC and all the staff was that Eurosceptics were xenophobes and there
was an end to it. The euro would come up at a meeting and everybody would just burst out laughing about the Eurosceptics.’ Liddle recalls one meeting with a very senior figure at the BBC to
deal with Eurosceptic complaints of bias. ‘Rod, the thing you have to understand is that these people are mad. They are mad.’
In truth the Eurosceptics were only too sane. Politicians like Margaret Thatcher, John Redwood, David Owen, William Hague and Bill Cash were mocked — often very cruelly — at the time.
But they grasped with stunning clarity the problems the euro would bring. They deserve full credit for their courage and foresight today, and our gratitude too.
•••
Speaking in the House of Commons in 1936, Winston Churchill — then himself a marginal and widely scorned figure — uttered the following words: ‘the use of recriminating about the
past is to enforce effective action at the present’. So what are the lessons we should learn from the British argument over the euro?
First, we should cherish that very British trait, eccentricity. Study of the public discourse at the height of the euro debate shows how often pro-euro propagandists isolated their critics by
labelling them cranks. Here’s just one example, taken from the Observer columnist Andrew Rawnsley’s column on 31 January 1999: ‘On the pro-euro side, a grand coalition of
business, the unions and the substantial, sane, front rank political figures. On the other side, a menagerie of has-beens, never-have-beens and loony tunes.’
Most of Mr Rawnsley’s ‘substantial, sane, front-rank political figures’ came together 12 years ago at the launch of the Britain in Europe campaign to take us into the euro —
Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Michael Heseltine, Ken Clarke, Charles Kennedy, Danny Alexander. So here’s another lesson: be wary of cross-party alliances. Again and again it is the lonely and
cussed figures who stand outside the establishment orthodoxy who are vindicated over time.
One urgent lesson concerns the BBC. The corporation’s twisted coverage of the European Union is a serious problem, because the economic collapse of the eurozone means that a new treaty may be
needed very soon — plunging the EU right back into the heart of our national politics.
The problem is that the BBC’s record is dreadful. It simply cannot be trusted not to become part of a partisan propaganda operation: just look at the membership of the BBC Trust. Both its
chairman, Lord Patten, and the vice chairman, Diane Coyle, took a heavily partisan position in the euro debate.
The facts concerning Lord Patten are well enough known, but we have unearthed very troubling evidence of bias and misrepresentation concerning Ms Coyle in her role as economics writer for the
Independent ten years ago. Here’s an example of her prejudicial analysis: ‘The defenders of sterling are, in the main, a group of elderly men with more stake in their past than in our
future. They clothe their gut anti-Europeanism and Little Englandism in the language of rational economic argument.’
Of course Ms Coyle is welcome to voice whatever unfounded and insulting assumptions she wants about the motivations of Eurosceptics — but they call into question her membership of the BBC
Trust. The presence of Lord Patten and Ms Coyle as the two most senior figures of the BBC Trust, with a statutory duty to enforce impartiality, is unacceptable, all the more so because of the
BBC’s disastrous past record of bias and prejudice.
Finally, it remains essential for our democracy that the pro-euro point of view should be heard. But first of all the euro supporters need to tell us why they tried to put Britain on the calamitous
path of joining the single currency. Let’s consider the remark made by Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, that those he labelled as anti-European isolationists or nationalists
were ‘enemies of growth’.
For five years Mr Alexander ran the pro-euro campaign, and had he had his way would have steered Britain directly to economic catastrophe. How dare he denounce Eurosceptics in this way? It’s
way past time for the pro-euro supporters to be called to account.
Guilty Men, by Peter Oborne and Frances Weaver, will soon be published by the Centre for Policy Studies with a foreword by Peter Jay. Frances Weaver is a freelance writer and researcher.
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Previous
TomTom
September 22nd, 2011 12:22pm Report this comment"as the Conservative Eurosceptics. "
The Ministry of Truth keeps the propaganda offensive live for the Party Conference !!!
Euroscepticism is not "Conservative" - it in NON-Party, it is a Movement. The Conservative Party is the Party of EU Treaties and both Heath and Thatcher deepened and widened British commitment to the EU Project until John Major lacked a majority.
Oborne is such a bought mouthpiece as to be a laughing stock
Fergus Pickering
September 22nd, 2011 12:35pm Report this commentCome, come, Tom Tom. ALL Eurosceptics are of conservative turn of mind. Name me one who is not.
Tiberius
September 22nd, 2011 12:49pm Report this commentThe point I would like to make in response to TomTom is that it is Tories and their party who have paid the political price for their Euroscepticism. That gives them elevated status worthy of mention by Oborne or whoever.
The party suffered to an almost terminal degree during Major's premiership, and William Hague in particular suffered at the hands of the oh-so-clever Euro-enthusiasts in the media while he was party leader.
Who outside the Tory fold has suffered a near-death experience? Brown kept us out of the euro as an act of spite against Blair, but what political capital did cost him or his party? Some on the Labour Left were sceptics, such as Tony Benn, but again no noteworthy pain accrued as a result.
No, Euroscepticism is indeed a Tory quality and they should celebrate their correct calling of the situation. However I doubt many of the Europhiles will hold their hands up and applaud those who did call it correctly.
Tom Gallagher
September 22nd, 2011 12:54pm Report this commentThe FT has got some good analysts who wake up occasioanlly and smell the coffee when it comes to the calamitous EU.
But as pointed out here, since at least the 1991 Maastricht Treaty and the genesis of the Euro, it has failed to subject the EU's madcap utopianism to any consistent scrutiny. When the editor, Lionel Barber pops up on the BBC's question Time, it is striking how lightweight but also self-satisfied he turns out to be. The FT now assumes that consumer capitalism is what hlds Britain together and it believes this particular market is left-leaning in its outlook. Hence the fawning interviews with Sartre's successor as the premier Eurppean Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek and even cosy weekend chit chats with Russian oligarchs. If you saw Lionel Barber and Brendan Barber, the head of the TUC together, I wonder how many people could tell the difference?
daniel maris
September 22nd, 2011 1:06pm Report this commentTom Tom is correct and Tony Benn is an example of a left wing Eurosceptic.
Of course Conservative Eurosceptics is a conveniently ambiguous phrase - does it mean those Eurosceptics who happen to be Conservative or does it imply Euroscepticism is largely Conservative?
The bigger question is whether Eurosceptics are right in a wider sense. Eurosceptics have always said the EU is a superstate project. David Cameron, Ed Milliband and others deny that is the case - but where is their evidence?
It's now time to pull out of the EU and join the EEA.
strapworld
September 22nd, 2011 1:15pm Report this commentPeter Shore.Tony Benn.Gisela Stuart to name but three eurosceptic members of the Labour Party.
I happen to agree with Tom Tom. Eurosceptism is not the Tory's but a movement outside. Eurosceptics have been treated with scorn by all three parties in Westminster and THEY are the traitors.
It is time for the Eurosceptics of all parties and none to start shouting OUT now.
JohnPage
September 22nd, 2011 1:19pm Report this commentThe Telegrpah's summary is at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/8780075/The-great-euro-swindle.html
The Tory eurosceptics won that battle but they're losing the war against their europhile leader. Other than that the Telegraph summary is a good read.
As you read it, interesting to bear in mind the treatment being meted out in the BBC and elsewhere to "global warming deniers".
Compare and contrast.
Hexhamgeezer
September 22nd, 2011 2:56pm Report this commentA good DT article Mr O. I look foward to seeing the full version in the Spec. Much more effort is needed to keep asking the euroloons when they want us to go into the euro and if not now why not, and what would we have gained by being in it already?
Will Hutton would do for starters, then Ken Clarke, then Nick 'Eurocitizen' Clegg, then Danny Alexander, then Vince Cable, then..........etc etc etc.
Dimoto
September 22nd, 2011 2:57pm Report this commentWow ! Peter Oborne as guru !?
Despite having some desperately lame editors, journalists and Eurofanatic columnists (Sam Brittan ?) in recent (and not so recent) years, it is silly to apportion blame for the FT's Euro-Labour tendency this far down the food chain.
You need to look at the proprietors.
The Telegraph has also accrued some very rum journos indeed in recent years. Like the FT it's wholly due to proprietor's caprice.
Oborne needs to learn to distinguish between cause and effect.
Dimoto
September 22nd, 2011 3:13pm Report this commentThe problem with the "EU debate", is that it is kept within deliberately parochial boundaries.
The real debate should be in terms of aggregate power structures versus disaggregation.
Have the continental powers (US, China, Russia) really been more successful than the squabbling, competitive, disaggregated Europe ?
Continental powers with similar historical records (China) show just as much warfare, mayhem and disruption as Europe.
European disaggregation has a splendid record of originality, invention, discovery and culture, not matched elsewhere.
Why spoil it ?
The present zeigeist is all about disaggregating power, whether in the political field or in the technological/communications revolution.
Europe should be loving it.
JohnOfEnfield
September 22nd, 2011 3:14pm Report this commentAs luck would have it, Gordon Brown's animus towards Tony Blair was such that he invented a set of tests to keep us out of the Euro.
I have absolutely no doubt that - if it hadn't been so obviously stupid when he came to power, that he would have crowned himself as the man who took Britain into the "Euro".
Event, events dear boy, overtook him.
Even paranoiacs have their uses.
IDRIS_FRANCIS
September 22nd, 2011 3:47pm Report this commentChris Huhne, who still dreams of joining the euro, was a prominent FT journalist in the early 1990s.
In a 1/1 conversation at a fringe meeting I told Richard ?????, then DG of the CBI, previously Editor of the FT, that the FT had been wrong on every issue since the late 1970s. His response in 2007 or 2008? That the coming recession might yet force us into the euro whether we wanted it or not!
When I asked Kate Barker, then head of CBI economics, later member of the MPC, why her speed advocating joining the euro contained no numbers she replied that the many effects of joining were subject to such wide margins of error that it was impossible to know what the consequences would be - but that she and the CBI wanted to join anyway! Her later letter to me complaining about my quoting her words, astonishingly, confirmed them!
John Major - whose sole economic credentials were I believe a postal correspondence course in book-keeping, was mad keen on the ERM, said in Scotland in August 1992 that there was no question of leaving the ERM and that if we did, interesrt rates would go UP (!!!!) He increased bank rate from 105 to 12% to 15% in his last desparate attempt to stay in - and the markets belly-laughed.
Despite that, he was mad keen at Maastricht on signing up for the euro and it was Norman Lamont who stopped him - Lamont has never been given the credit he deserves for that or putting in place the first steps of our recovery.
Ed Balls told me 1/1 at a fringe meeting that he and Brown were keen to join the euro "as soon as economic conditions were right" and it is clear that Brown's back of the envelope in a taxi 5 tests were invented just to get back at Blair. The idea that these two idiots should be praised for keeping us out of the euro is absurd as others have said.
Most praise should go to Goldsmith and Business for Sterling - of which I was a founder member through contacst at IoD membership and the IoD was always right on this one.
Also, resistance to the euro was if stronger within UKIP than the Tories - UKIP's logo remains to this day the £ sign. Hague's refusal like Howard's was always time limited, UKIP's was unconditional and permanent.
For the 19 years I have been fighting the EU, to get out while we still can, my greatest fear was that the elite, the big business people, the City and others most affected would fail to come to their senses.
I did not see Peter Oborne at the Time to Leave the EU debate on Tuesday, but what was most encouraging was not just the 4/1 vote in favour of leaving but the evident status and quality of the 550+ audience - clearly opinion formers, employers, etc etc. By far the most impressive and clearly prosperous (still)audience I have seen in 19 years of liteally hundreds of meetings. And when they vote 4/1 - up from 3/1 before the speeches, I know its all over but the shouting.
My ccntribution from the floor was
"I was an exporter and I understand the ecomomics - and I want OUT.
More importantly, a fundamental point. In this country we have the democratic principle that no Parliament may bind its successors. In the EU we have "ever closer union" and "aqui communitaire"
Here we pay Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition to provide dissent - there MEPs like Daniel Hannan have been fined £1000 for showing dissent and told by Mr. Pottinger that "Dissent is not allowed".
(turning to the audience) "Ladies and gentlemen - I want to live, and I want to die, in a country where dissent is not only allowed, but welcomed." and sat down.
Anyone here want to live in a single European State in which dissent is not allowed, and penalised? The whole of man's progress since ancient times has depended on dissent and argument, largely from those who were seen at the time to be eccentrics.
All praise to them, we need more, not a totalitarian rule book predicated on the idea that the man in the Ministry knows best. He does not, and more often than not he is worst of the lot
Chris
September 22nd, 2011 3:54pm Report this commentStop reporting from your own imaginary reality. The euro's still there, still stable and still working. Growth in the eurozone is projected higher than in Britain. All the pound does for us is load costs on to our business and force our citizens to get swindled on currency exchange every time they leave the country.
The europhobes are wrong and their opinions are electoral poison, which is why Cameron's desperately pretending they don't exist and UKIP comes nowhere in elections.
Augustus
September 22nd, 2011 3:57pm Report this commentIt's on the cards that the eurozone will break down in a thoroughly disorderly way. Why give those countries that are already junk-status (or are about to become junk-status) another fix? Everyone knows that if you lend money to a junkie you'll never get it back.
Simon Stephenson.
September 22nd, 2011 4:15pm Report this commentFor heaven's sake!
What's happened to the comments made when this article was held in the magazine, and linked to from Coffee House? You appear to have transferred the article from magazine to Coffee House, but left the comments behind - instead showing the handful of comments which were added to the original, introductory, Coffee House post.
It wouldn't normally matter too much, because the comments would be fairly sparse. In this case, however, there were Coffee Housers who went to a lot of trouble to add comments, but who can't now access them unless they are also magazine subscribers.
Get it sorted out, please.
Simon Stephenson.
September 22nd, 2011 4:18pm Report this commentIDRIS_FRANCIS : 3.47pm
Thanks for this contribution - very illuminating.
FvH
September 22nd, 2011 4:27pm Report this commentOborne touches on the crucial point about Britain's EU membership
i.e. the big business lobby is what keeps us in (and would have had us join the Euro)
the federalist tendency like Danny Alexander are a much weaker bloc
BUT this moment of crisis in the Eurozone does seem to present an opportunity
We need to study the methods of Lenin in how best to exploit the crisis and destabilize the EU even more
Any suggestions?
Dennis Churchill
September 22nd, 2011 7:57pm Report this commentIf only the Conservative party had not been captured by by a political class that accepts the same “Givens” as their contemporaries in Lab/Lib.An official Inquiry into the BBC’s coverage could have been the implement to scrap it.
The BBC is culturally Anglophobic and Pro-Cultural Marxist Labour. Its size means it dominates the media in this country.
What is the origin of “Little Englander”? Is it something some BBC Grandee’s old Czech granny used to say?
Tom Pride
September 22nd, 2011 8:29pm Report this commentJohnOfEnfield
September 22nd, 2011 3:14pm
“if it hadn't been so obviously stupid when he came to power, that he would have crowned himself as the man who took Britain into the "Euro".”
Don’t forget that when he became PM this scenario ( I’m sure your right) was thwarted by Blair’s and New Labour’s promise of a referendum before entry – which brings me on to the great unsung hero – William Hague.
It was in Hagues’ tenure as Conservative Leader that the promise of a referendum on joining the Euro was wrung out of Blair and New Labour – partly to neutralise the Euro as an issue in the June 2001 election. That referendum became critical once Brown pushed out Blair to become PM and no longer wished / needed to prevent Euro entry (whether to spite Blair or protect his progression to leadership or both).
Hague took more than a fair share of flak for his performance in the 2001 election - very unfairly in my view as it was an impossible task for anyone to beat Blair at that time. He deserves credit for what he did manage to achieve as Tory Leader at a desperate moment for the Conservative Party.
LDTJD
September 22nd, 2011 8:31pm Report this comment"Turning its back on its readers, it was captured by a clique of left-wing journalists"
Sounds familiar.
TGF UKIP
September 22nd, 2011 9:31pm Report this commentAs Guido points out those hysterical Euro enthusiasts are almost to a man/woman today's "climate change" headbangers. That observation also applies, as it happens, to at least one CHer.
Tom Pride
September 22nd, 2011 10:04pm Report this commentOoops! My above comment - your / you’re
Also:
Simon Stephenson.
September 22nd, 2011 4:18pm
IDRIS_FRANCIS : 3.47pm
Thanks for this contribution - very illuminating.
Agreed.
Particularly the 1 to 1 with Ballsey boy. He used to contribute to the FT leaders before attaching himself to the panicking financially and economically illiterate Brown one, and, didn’t his bro Andrew write for the Lex column? What a paper – even old Adolf only had one.
Also:
Ruth Lea – another one who took more than her fair share of crap from the pretentious intellectual giants and who deserves credit for speaking the truth. We should see / hear more from her.
Baron
September 22nd, 2011 11:35pm Report this commentNot that Baron often agrees with Peter Oborne, on this occasion though he gets it spot on, the BBC role, quite a pivotal one in brainwashing the hoi polloi, irks the most, in particular now after the overpaid solipsistic tossers kicked out the only force that could have opposed them, if only because it was informed by business pragmatism rather than ideological fanaticism.
Guido’s observation that the same bunch of the Europhiles are also backing the insanity of the Green movement, the obnoxious Turner being a case in point, shows how deep has the rot engineered by the deluded set in.
What saddens is that the power of those who got it so massively wrong will not diminish one bit, not unlike in the domain of the AGW, the pursuit of the dream of a united Europe come what may will continue, too, the nutters would rather engineer the full Monty of societal collapse than to admit to the wholesale failure of their views, it seems even the Euro is likely to survive at a huge cost to living standard of the unwashed of Europe.
Who or what will rid us of the deluded clowns?
IDRIS_FRANCIS
September 23rd, 2011 12:08am Report this commentThanks to those who approve of my comments. In explanation - my defining moment about the EU was at the time of Maastricht when I realised that they intended to make working hard a criminal offence. It was then that I realised that they were clinically insane and would destroy the economies of Europe, as they are now doing.
I confess to being a name-dropper, but all of the conversations I mentioned did happen exactly as I wrote - and many more, including saying the Shirley Williams at a LD fringe meeting that she had been consistent for 40 years - consistently wrong about everything.
For the record, it was not Hague who promised a referendum on the euro, but Major in 1997 under pressure from Goldsmith and the Referendum Party. His promise forced Blair and I think the LDs to match it.
As for Hague, I would not trust him with a bent euro. When I heckled him at one of his White Van Man meetings, in Woking and told him in Q+A that if his manifesto promised to take us out of the EU he would win the election he refused, repeating surely the most inane and insane campaign slogan ever - "In Europe but not ruled by Europe"
Which reminds me of the age-old problem of differentiating between fools and liars.
I joined the IoD in 1994 because of their vehement opposition to the euro, headed by Ruth Lea and her deputy, now head, Graeme Leach and got to know both reasonably well at meetings. Both were completely opposed to the euro, and as Ruth stated publicly at a Bruges Group Conference, she was fired on the direct orders of 10 Downing Street, using threats that unless she was removed all contact with the IoD would end - THAT is the true nature of Blair and his cronies. For quite some time - while still at the IoD and afterwards - Ruth's official position was that while the euro was unacceptable we should stay in the EU and fix it from within. I am happy to say that, no longer constrained, she changed her view several years ago to that I took in 1992, that it is impossible to fix the EU from within and that we must leave.
In that context, I asked Vladimyr Bukhovsky, the Russian dissident, at a CIB meeting whether I was wrong and others right and that we should stay and fix it from within. He smiled and replied "I remember when I was a young dissident in Russia. Some argued that we should join the Communist Party and fight it from inside. An older man told us that this was like joining a brothel to fight venereal disease - you end up catching it. The European Union is a disease, it cannot be cured, it can only be eradicated." How right he is.
In my spare time (!) from fighting the EU I have also been fighting speed camera nonsense - www.fightbackwithfacts.com contains a great deal of information and analysis though is not yet complete.
HO Lim-peng
September 23rd, 2011 9:40am Report this commentThe FT's almost pathological support of nearly all things EU is not simply due to its journalists being lefties, it is a commercial strategy. The paper is very successful in mainland Europe, more so than in UK, so it panders to its large readership there. As Eroscepticism spreads accross the continent, it will be interesting to see if FT changes its stance....
Noa.
September 23rd, 2011 2:07pm Report this commentIdris Francis
On fighting the EU from within:-
"..like joining a brothel to fight venereal disease - you end up catching it..."
Priceless! Thank you for that summation.
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