IPFS News Link • European Union
Europe has an even bigger crisis on its hands than a British exit
• By Ambrose Evans-PritchardBritish defenders of the status quo were knouted on Sunday. UKIP won 27.5pc of the vote, or 29pc after adjusting for the negligence - or worse - of the Electoral Commission in allowing a spoiler party with much the same name to sow confusion. Margaret Thatcher's Tory children are scarcely more friendly to the EU enterprise.
Britain's decision to stay out of monetary union at Maastricht sowed the seeds of separation, as pro-Europeans fully understood at the time, though almost nobody expected EMU officialdom to clinch the argument so emphatically by running the currency bloc into the ground with 1930s Gold Standard policies and youth unemployment levels above 50pc in Spain and Greece, and above 40pc in Italy.