Tea Party Europe

A Balanced Budget Amendment to the federal Constitution is the stuff of Hard Right fantasy in America, and can exist at state level in, for example, Texas only because so many essentials are provided by the federal government.

But in the EU, a legally binding ban on deficit spending above three per cent of GDP, with stringent penalties for any state that stepped out of line, has been wafted through as if it were quite unremarkable.

The DUP, the party of two of the most statist communities in Europe, the Ulster Protestant middle and working classes, has every reason to be pleased that the United Kingdom has stayed out of this wretched arrangement. But why does the SNP want to join it?