The crisis in the eurozone has triggered a “big shift in government policy”, says Rachel Sylvester in The Times. For years the UK has tried to preserve its influence in Brussels while steering clear of some of the EU’s hallmark projects such as the euro. But the need to solve the eurozone debt crisis has exposed Britain’s position – one of influencing events from the sidelines – as increasingly awkward. So now the normally eurosceptic chancellor George Osborne sounds “positively glowing about the prospect of closer fiscal union” between existing eurozone member states.
Yet until recently the government had always opposed this kind of “twin-track approach” that will leave Britain further outside the bloc. Expect “sparks to fly within the coalition” – the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, is pro-European, leaving David Cameron walking a political tightrope. Many Tories see the sovereign debt crisis as “an “unexpected opportunity” for Britain to “rethink its relationship with the EU”. But in practice none of the proposed reforms require treaty changes that could be vetoed by us.
Policy change has been effectively forced on the government, says The Economist. “Britain has a strong interest in the survival of the single currency” and that can only come about via closer fiscal union between eurozone members. But a “toxic” level of hostility to the euro among voters and their own MPs prevents the government from getting Britain in any further. So they have no choice but to back the changes while stepping back from further fiscal integration that involves Britain.
This is bad news. The most likely outcome of a two-tier Europe is a “second-class membership” for Britain, and that will be “much less fun than the eurosceptics think”. Eurosceptics believe that we will end up with a type of associate membership “that would allow Britain to ditch EU labour market rules and other corporatist annoyances, and still export its goods, tariff-free, into the EU proper”. That’s laughable. “Why does anyone imagine that the eurozone countries, who face doling out vast amounts of taxpayers’ money to poorer southern fringes of the continent, would give Britain such a good deal?” The government may enjoy standing back “from the eurozone crisis, arms folded”, but in future Britain’s influence in Europe will be lessened.
Eurosceptics see the continent’s troubles as proof to draw further away from it, says Will Hutton in The Observer. They yearn for an “imagined nirvana of floating exchange rates, completely deregulated labour markets, low tax and a minimal state that will deliver the alchemy of capitalist prosperity”. Dismal UK growth figures show where this philosophy leads.
Not so, says Daniel Hannan in The Daily Telegraph. “Keeping the pound saved us from Ireland’s fate.” Now “we ought to establish ourselves as a haven for those fleeing the uncertainty of the euro – a position which, despite our advantages of size, geography, language and global commerce, we currently cede to the Swiss.” If we ignore this opportunity, “we shall pay a price for our complacency”.