Ridley was right

‘It’s very easy to be wise with hindsight,’ Nick Clegg this week told a BBC interviewer who had tasked the Deputy Prime Minister with his long-held view that the euro is a wonderful currency which Britain was crazy not to join. A cross-sounding Clegg went on to argue that ‘no one’ had envisaged that the eurozone might be in the plight it is today. This we can only describe as being foolish with hindsight.

Although it is true that no one forecast the exact circumstances of the crisis, one politician did set out with startling clarity the main reason why the currency was misconceived — and it cost him his job. I refer to Nicholas Ridley, who in July 1990 gave an interview to The Spectator warning of the explosive consequences of the loss of national economic sovereignty implicit in a single European currency. ‘There could be a bloody revolution,’ he warned those who bought the 14 July 1990 issue.