Politics: Euroscepticism isn’t just for Tories any more

When Ed Balls lists the greatest accomplishments of his career, he does so with a wonderful lack of modesty. He may have been a mere Treasury adviser when Labour came to power, but even then he was — we now learn — pulling the strings of Tony Blair’s government. Bank of England independence was his idea. Ditto Labour’s decision to stick to the Tories’ eye-wateringly tight spending plans for the first few years of its rule. But Balls’s proudest boast, and one repeated with striking regularity, is that he stopped Britain joining the euro.

Not so long ago, the shadow chancellor would have kept this as quiet as his  friendship with Damian McBride. When Balls drew up his ‘five tests’ for joining the euro, he was subverting the will of a staunchly pro-European Labour party. But British politics has since changed. No one, not even Nick Clegg, admits to being in favour of the euro. Public opinion is shifting, too: only a third of the country regards Britain’s EU membership as a good idea.