Tony Blair has said the UK will face an "interesting choice" over whether to join the euro if the currency's current crisis is resolved. The former prime minister told the BBC he believed the UK should still be keeping open the option of joining it. He said that looking at the "broad sweep of history" in the long term "the European integration project" was going to go ahead, "like it or not". The UK, as a "small island nation", had to be part of it to have influence. Mr Blair said that the only thing that would save the single currency now was to have a "grand plan" where Germany was ready to commit its economy fully - "treating the debts of one as the debts of all". This would be difficult for Germany, he said, and would have to be in return for other countries having "precise, deliverable" programmes of change and reform that could restore European competitiveness. As well as economic changes, political change was also inevitable with Europe needing reform of labour markets, pensions, welfare, public services the role of the state, he said. He told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show that his former chancellor Gordon Brown had "always been right" on the economic case against the UK joining the euro when Labour was in power.
No comments:
Post a Comment