How did I get it right on the euro? Easy. I was racist

Do you remember the vicious debates back in the middle of the 1990s about whether or not we should join the single European currency? We don’t have that argument much any more; even the Liberal Democrats keep their traps shut about it these days and try to change the subject when any one mentions it.

Do you remember the vicious debates back in the middle of the 1990s about whether or not we should join the single European currency? We don’t have that argument much any more; even the Liberal Democrats keep their traps shut about it these days and try to change the subject when any one mentions it. Anyway, the debate back then was remarkable because almost everybody except the entire British public was in favour of the single currency. The scattering of disparate politicians who were opposed to us adopting the euro — a hefty tranche of largely powerless Tories, the Referendum Party, a few lefties (plus Peter Shore) within Labour — were regarded as lunatics who you would not leave in charge of your children, let alone your money.

Indeed, when I was editor of the Today programme and had to deal with complaints from the likes of the Eurosceptical Lord Pearson of Rannoch, to the effect that we were not giving them adequate coverage on the programme, a senior BBC executive told me: ‘Rod, the thing you have to understand is that these people are mad. They are mad.’ She was the person in charge of political impartiality for the corporation — but then that’s how bien-pensant opinion of the time had it; not that Eurosceptics were simply wrong, but that they were deranged, doolally. And worse than either of these, they were racist.