The Euro

It is wholly unremarkable to state that this country will never join the Euro. For all his City interlude, William Hague the Yorkshire business dynast turned Yorkshire MP clearly, and rightly, cannot see the problem with an exchange rate that is good for manufacturing and for domestic tourism, mass-employing pursuits that pay the taxes out of which bailouts are funded.

Even if the Lib Dems won, then Vince Cable would never have anything to do with the Euro. And he would be the reason why they had won. But it was the 1997 Election result that kept us out at the start. If the Tories had won, then numerous hardline Eurofederalists would have kept their seats, and Ken Clarke would have been kept on as Chancellor. So in we would have gone.

Cameron is under pressure to bring back Clarke (who, to give him his due, was right about Iraq), first a Minister before the preposterous Osborne was born. He very well might. No one should be remotely surprised if he did.

The Tories gave this country the Treaty of Rome, the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty. They withdrew the whip from those who merely abstained rather than vote to give any more money to Brussels. They voted year on year for the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies.

They reacted to the Lisbon Treaty by demanding a referendum that they knew was not going to happen (and in which they never undertook to campaign for a No vote), so that there was no amendment proposed at either Second or Third Reading simply rejecting the thing out of hand. Their current Leader is a wholly owned subsidiary of Michael Heseltine. They have still not left the EPP, and they never will.

And the anti-Maastricht Sir George Gardiner remains the only Tory MP ever to have been deselected because of his views on Europe. By contrast, the front bench is soon to be graced once again with the presence of Ken Clarke.