This extremely useful book concisely surveys the role that Euro-scepticism has played in recent British politics, focusing on the debates and decisions within the Conservative and Labour parties. His Chapter 1 defines and explains Euroscepticism. Chapter 2 looks at the opposition to the idea of European union that developed between 1945 and 1969. Chapter 3 studies the years of Britain's entry into the EEC, 1970 to 1974. Chapter 4 investigates the 1975 referendum on Britain's continued membership of the European Community. Chapter 5 views how attitudes to the European Community changed between 1979 and 1990. Chapter 6 describes the struggle against Political Union from 1990 to 1993. Chapter 7 brings us up to date with the struggle against Monetary Union since 1992, and Chapter 8 outlines the patterns and trends in Euroscepticism. Each chapter presents the situation, analyses the opponents, explores the arguments, describes the arena in which the politics were played out, and sums up the period.
Forster looks at the recent arguments about Economic and Monetary Union, both political and economic, and he judges that ceding control to a monetarist, deflationary European Central Bank would indeed both end our sovereignty and damage our economy. He shows that the ECB has no mandate to take jobs or growth into account, unlike the USA's central bank, the Fed, but that it focuses solely on inflation, just as Thatcher did. He notes that there is no flexibility in the Maastricht Treaty that set up the ECB, and that there is no possibility of rewriting it. He points to the growing democratisation of the debate's arena, particularly since 1975, which saw the first-ever ratification referendum, to 1997's hard-won promises of our first-ever decision-making referendum.
He concludes that in the euro "national governments' capacity to launch independent policies of wealth creation, employment generation and welfare improvement would be removed." He judiciously sums up, "much as Britain in Europe sought to portray its opponents as such, the alliance against the euro was not extremist."
