Douglas Carswell's Blog

Timothy Garton Ash is always right

This morning, I enjoyed a piece in the Guardian by Timothy Garton Ash.

It was all about Europe and the Euro.  It explains that one currency between "17 national polities" won't work. Monetary union is, the author informs us, tearing the European project apart in a "downward spiral of mutual resentment".  Rather the kind of thing Eurosceptic Tories used to say a decade or so ago, eh?    

But then I started to think. Tim Garton Ash?.... Tim Garton Ash?.... Didn't I once read some other stuff he used to say about Europe?

After a quick google search, I discovered another Guardian article written almost exactly ten years ago. The tone is a little different.

It begins with a sneering attack on "anachronistic, backward-looking" MPs who fail to get with the whole Euro thing. They are all very "old Britain", he tell us.

He goes on to talk about how "Europeanisation" could mean the "modernisation of Britain." 

"Otherwise" warns the good professor "and this is no longer a joke - the Poles will have the euro before we do". The horror!  And perhaps even the Cypriots, too! 

I don't mean to be beastly to the good professor. Even Oxford academics are allowed to change their minds.  

But google is becoming our collective memory. This means that we can each be held to account for things we once said and wrote – and got wrong.  Perhaps that means that those who debate public policy need to be all the more frank, and when we do change our minds, we should say so very publicly.  MPs included.

I see the good professor is now of the view that Britain must remain a member of the EU.

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