He came to talk to me about British Euroscepticism, and I did my best to explain. I said
it was far stronger in England than Scotland for nationalist reasons, and that although Labour MPs were, in general, mildly Eurosceptic — Brown would not take us into the Euro, for instance
— Euroscepticism was a passion on the Conservative side.
‘I know some of the young MPs who supported Cameron,’ I said. ‘They’re incredibly liberal about gay rights and all the rest of it but on the EU…’
‘They’re not liberal at all…’
I had to explain to him that supporting a Eurozone that is imposing an austerity on Ireland, Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal that offers them no way to grow out of recession was not, in normal
language, a ‘liberal’ thing to do. If anything Germany’s abhorrence of Keynesian demand boosting measures recalled Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, whose
response to the Great Crash of 1929 was to say, ‘liquidate labour, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.’
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