People write about ‘Grexit’ and ‘Brexit’ as if they were the same, but they need not be. Grexit is about leaving the euro. Brexit is about leaving the EU. It seems, however, that the Greeks fear that leaving the euro would mean leaving the EU, and so feel paralysed. It simply is not clear what the true situation is. Although Britain has a specific opt-out (as does Denmark), for the other member states, euro-membership is, after a preparatory period is completed, an obligation. Does this mean that, once in the euro, an EU member state cannot leave it? If so, then William Hague’s famous phrase likening it to ‘being in a burning building with no exits’ is exact. If there can be no exit, then surely the Commission, the ECB and the member states are obliged to rescue Greece, however bad its situation, since, by membership, it has surrendered the right to decide its own future. In reality, a ‘British way’, by which Greece was not in the currency but stayed in the Union, might suit it best. The Greeks would keep the non-Balkan self-image for which they have always yearned and the subsidies; but they would regain a currency whose value would reflect their economic reality. No one dares suggest this, however — not Britain, who would attract European odium by doing so, and not the eurozone powers, because other poverty- and debt-ridden countries, seeing it working, would want to follow suit.
I am writing this from one such — Portugal. Here in the Hotel Palacio, Estoril (‘grand & cosy’, it calls itself), the sense of crisis is not, one must admit, apparent. Under the auspices of the Estoril Political Forum, a great invention of the Portuguese Burkean, Professor João Espada, we are contentedly discussing Magna Carta. In the evening, we sing Harrow school songs in honour of Churchill.
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