Rest in peace old British Pound sterling, circa 800-May 1, 2007. You served your purpose and now its time has come to be replaced by the Euro. Though I do admit that the United Kingdom has lost a bit of its "Britishness" by getting rid of the currency it had been using for over a millennium.Part LXXII
EUreka!
*BONG* The sound of Big Ben sang through the television report, of a special late night edition of the BBC News.
“And there it is from midnight tonight, the 1st of May, 2007, the Euro is the official currency of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and it’s farewell to the pound It can no longer be spent in shops. After nearly 4 years of political tussling, the battle over the Eurozone entry is over. Britain is in.” – Jeremy Vine
The PM beamed, as he always did in moments like this, as he stood beside the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alan Milburn. Each withdrew bright red €10 notes from the cashier, and stood with them, as cameras snapped the scene. It had been an uphill fight, the referendum, which the government had barely survived had only been the beginning.
There had been a fight in parliament and in public over every little procedure, the ascension treaty, the exchange rate mechanism, the central bank adjustment., battles kicked into high gear by the loud faction of Eurosceptics who after the referendum defeat stayed firmly pinned to the masthead of ‘saving sterling".
(Left to right) PM Tony Blair, Big Ben, Chancellor Milburn
First, there were the Labour party skeptics who after the referendum most had stuck their heads below the sand, but a few renegades, the ‘usual suspects’ according to the Guardian like Dagenam MP Jon Cruddas or Islington’s Jeremy Corbyn who couldn’t help but snipe from the backbenches, offering a motion to ‘delay entry’ until the EU’s monitory policy aligned with Britain’s more closely. The Conservatives, though the party as a whole under Theresa May accepted the result, backed further rounds of negotiation before the final trigger was pulled, and some party members like Hensley MP Boris Johnson were happy to entertain all manner of schemes to keep the Pound, for instance retaining it as an alternate ‘duel currency’, an idea mocked as unworkable by Milburn.
He was part of the vocal faction of the party that had always been vocally opposed to Europe and grew more frustrated with the leadership of their own party for their refusal to not focus on the EU in campaigning and made up a significant clique of members who sought to entirely role back UK-EU relations, “We wish our negotiations every success, but unless government officials make serious compromises which doesn’t seem likely, there is a growing voice that is demanding our party stand up for British values” said MP Liam Fox in a Telegraph article.
Then there was the far-right, made up of three camps that varied in their extremity, the UKIP (UK independents party) under Robert Kilroy Silk, was singularly focused on the Euro becoming a single-issue party, known for their consistent picketing of government ministers, to the frustration of the more broadly Eurosceptics like Nigel Farage who left UKIP to create a new ‘more respectable centrist’ British Liberty party, which attracted the support of Tory turncoats (though no sitting MPs) who sought to fight further EU expansion, demanding a second referendum on the Euro and the European constitution to no avail. And then there were the fascists, Nick Griffins British National Party “Brownshirts in business suits” as the Home Secretary called them, who had throughout the Euro battle thrived achieving small but significant victories in local and European elections, the group had hardly shed its militancy, still sporting youth ‘clubs’ and demanded the deportation of “anyone who is a threat to Western Civilization”.
But by a country mile, the focus of the tabloids was the ‘invisible opposition’ within the Labour Party helmed supposedly by former Chancellor Gordon Brown, whose exit from government after the 2005 election could manifest headlines about his ‘growing dissatisfaction’ with the Prime Minister, each story decorated with another headshot of the eternally scowling Scotsman.
If you didn’t know any better it was as if Britain had become a One-Party state with the Conservatives often sidelined as Blair sought to rout his right flank with a tough-on-crime, anti-social behaviour policy, the so-called “war on ASBOs”, a signature Blairite policy that combined social-democratic spending with paternalistic populism. His third term marked a complete break with the Brownites, who had all exited or been shuffled out of the cabinet by ‘King Tony’ as he was more often portrayed in the press.
Tony Blair after 11 years was already the longest-serving Labour Prime Minister in UK history, and if he served out the remainder of this term would surpass Margeret Thatcher as the longest-serving PM of the modern era, and by the looks of things Blair had no intentions of stepping aside yet and plans of a 4th term were making their way through parliamentary back channels, the New Labour Revolution would power on.
(Top to bottom. Left to right) Labour MP Jon Cruddas, Conservative leader Theresa May, and MP Boris Johnson
Leaders of right-wing parties Robert Kilroy-Silk, Nigel Farage, and Nick Griffin
Former Chancellor Gordon Brown
To secure victory in the referendum, Blair and his team had pitched to the electorate that entry would make Britain a truly competitive player in Europe, “a leader on the European stage” all language that suggested the Euro would be accommodating for the UK not the other way around, and so negotiations began with every member state hopeful of bringing the UK into the single currency without caving into British demands
Despite the bumpy road through Euro ascension Blair had always remained personally popular, especially when compared to the opposition but he had still accrued baggage, the biggest blow being struck when in 2006 the “cash for honours” scandal kicked off when it was revealed that men nominated for appointment to the House of Lords were major Labour party fundraisers, sparking a criminal investigation that was pushed into high gear when the PM was questioned by the Police over the affair.
The other major scandal was directly related to the Euro referendum, amid persistent claims from the Vote-No campaign that the government had spent unaccounted-for cash in the campaign, used illegal advertising tactics, and most scandalous of all alleged that a ‘dodgy dossier’ had been written by No.10 Downing Street to force the Treasuries hand into endorsing the Euro, claiming that a campaign helmed by the PM’s chief spin-doctors like Alistair Cambell and cabinet ministers like Peter Mandelson had been unleashed to browbeat the media and major financial institutions into backing the Euro effort, spawning opposition calls into an investigation into the government’s efforts, efforts that interrupted the delicate talks.
Things were up and down amid the negotiations and the scandal, as Downing Street welcomed EU bureaucrats, chancellors, and heads of state from nearly 2 dozen countries to manage a workable agreement finally reaching one after over 18 months of banging heads into walls finally ratified the completed agreement. “We have emerged from this process into a new era, a new generation for Britain, a new consensus in hand”. He said at a party conference speech the first since to be absent of Brown.
One by one, the Euro adversaries fell by the wayside and laid down their swords, the English pubs and cabbies that pledged not to accept the currency surrendered to the inevitable and removed their window stickers. In the immediacy, the reaction was largely positive, traders in London cheered the changeover and stocks rose, and the lower exchange rate loosened markets and fuelled a spending spree, though sceptics insisted that it was a monetary bubble destined to burst, the average consumer didn’t care, for now at least.
With his domestic politics reassured, Blair joyously returned to the sphere of global politics, an elder statesman by now he held considerable sway and was an outspoken advocate for humanitarian interventionism in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Darfur, forged close bonds with three American Presidents and bolstered Britain as a key player in the world stage, and had often positioned himself as even more hawkish than America when it came to confronting the Taleban, Sudan, Iraq and other autocrats who he claimed “undermined the international community” like the Ayatollah, Mugabe, Assad or Ghaddafi who had lumped together into as members of the “Dictators Club”.
But Tony still had battles he wanted to fight, the civil war in Iraq presented the Prime Minister an opportunity to bring down a tyrant he despised, once and for all, as he too joined a growing chorus of those advocating to support the Iraqi opposition, through the direct use of Anti-Terror Coalition aircraft to attack Saddam’s forces, an agenda now shared by legislators inside the United States like Democratic Senators Joe Lieberman and Joe Biden as well as Senator and Presidential candidate John McCain who said that “America should always stand with the free Iraqi people, who are being butchered by Saddam” and agreed that the United States should push for Saddam’s immediate removal from power following the especially bloody spring fighting.
(Left to right) UK 1 Euro coin, PM Blair
I know it was mentioned in a previous chapter that it would happen anyway, but I guess with the world being a little less chaotic, the British government deciding to ditch the Pound with the Euro wasn't out of the realm of possibility.
This was a pretty interesting update Iwanh. It was nice to see what was happening over in Europe.
