The Great Debate UK
Few British cheers for euro amid crisis
Paul Taylor is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
The financial crisis has rallied support for euro adoption in many European countries outside the currency bloc, yet in Britain the discussion is so far confined to a few voices among the policy elite.
The politics of the issue remain as fraught as ever, and Britons appear no more willing to lose monetary sovereignty in a recession than they were in the boom years.
For most of the last decade, as the flexible, finance-driven British economy was roaring ahead of its sluggish continental cousins, the economic and political case for joining the single European currency was hard to make.
A Eurosceptical tabloid press helped scare former Prime Minister Tony Blair out of his initial intention to lead Britain into the euro. The 2003 Iraq war drained the political capital he would have needed to win public support.
