James Smart (Reading East CLP) reviews Sovereignty For What? Why stopping European Monetary Union is just the start by Will Podmore and Phil Katz (published by Will Podmore, 32pp).
Thatcherism was built on a number of paradoxes: the free market and the strong state, laissez faire policies for industry and subsidies for defence contractors, nationalistic rhetoric whilst signing away economic sovereignty. Sovereignty For What? explores this paradoxical attitude towards the EU and examines the costs, both economic and political, of further integration and the possible benefits of leaving the EU.
The first half of the pamphlet serves as an excellent primer on the economic consequences of EMU. All the usual suspects are identified: the madness of CAP, the enforced regressive taxation of VAT and the economic pain caused by the Maastricht criteria. Podmore and Katz put the cost of EU membership at £255 billion. £255 billion that could have been used in rebuilding the country.
The second half of the pamphlet looks at the future of the European Union. If Britain joins the EMU, the economic levers of government will be handed over to an unelected central bank. The losers, as usual, won't be the speculators or the ruling elite, but the working man and woman.
The pamphlet is an excellent contribution to the European debate. It moves it away from the nationalism that fuels the Tories' opposition to the EU and instead provides sound economic and political reasons, from a left wing perspective, why we should oppose EMU.
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