Tony Blair’s secret plot for UK to ditch the pound exposed | Politics | News
Tony Blair was planning to drag Britain into the euro in a secret bid opposed by his own ministers, official documents have revealed.
The former Prime Minister was so determined to abandon the pound that his advisers drew up plans for a referendum in 2004, despite fierce resistance from then-chancellor Gordon Brown.
Documents released by the National Archives reveal that Mr Blair’s passion for the European project reached extraordinary levels.
They reveal that just four days after Mr Brown told the House of Commons that Britain was not ready to join the euro, a senior aide urged the Prime Minister to press ahead no matter what.
Arnab Banerji, Mr Blair’s senior economic adviser, wrote a memo on June 13, 2003, claiming the benefits of joining would be so great they could pay for a “second NHS” within 30 years.
In an extraordinary document titled “The Economic Case for the Euro”, Mr Banerji argued that signing up to the single currency would benefit the UK economy by around £3 billion a year.
He wrote: “[The benefit] “There will be an annual increase in production of 5% to 9% of GDP within 30 years.”
Mr Banerji added that at the time the NHS cost around 7% of GDP. He wrote that the country’s choice was “pretty strict.” “In 30 years we could have benefits equivalent to a full second NHS, or worse services and higher taxes.”
Documents seen in the Financial Times show that many aides in Blair’s inner circle accepted this claim and were determined to maintain euro membership.
They even planned the details of a possible referendum and suggested who could vote if it went ahead. Newspapers even revealed that they had decided on the question: “Should the United Kingdom adopt the Euro as its currency?”
Aides had also prepared a more positive version of Mr Brown’s statement to the House of Commons on 9 June 2003. In the version penned by his unelected aides, Mr Brown would have stressed the benefits of joining the euro “more strongly” and even opened the door to a referendum on membership in 2004, the Financial Times reported.
But the documents reveal bitter disagreement between Mr Blair and Mr Brown over the issue. They include minutes of a meeting at the government’s headquarters aimed at getting the two men to agree on messaging after airing their differences.
An official named the late Jeremy Heywood reportedly stated that a ministerial group seeking to devalue the pound in favor of the euro would not be called a “Cabinet committee”, even though it was made up of Cabinet ministers and held its meetings in the Cabinet room.
Instead, it would be known as an “informal ministerial group” to “meet the concerns of Great Britain”, Mr Heywood wrote. GB is understood to be referring to Gordon Brown. Tensions between the government’s two most powerful men continued while Mr Blair was in 10th place. Mr Brown destroyed any hopes of euro membership as soon as he became Prime Minister in 2007.
