I’ve been unsure about this war in Iraq that hasn’t yet happened but which everyone says will, Real Soon Now. Am I a de Havillandite ‘Get In There And Liberate Everybody’ libertarian, or a Cato Institute/Rothbardian ‘Don’t Mess With Them And Then They Won’t Mess With Us’ libertarian? Both positions seem to me to have major merits.
But now here’s an argument that has really impinged upon the Micklethwait cranium. In yesterday’s Sunday Times (Aug 25 – no links but the thing summarises itself well), at the end of the leader article on Page 1.16 headed “It’s Iraq or the euro”, the ST says that Blair …
… could not unite the Labour party behind both a war and a referendum. He will have to choose between the two. Since there is no compelling reason for Britain to join the euro, it is clear where his priority should lie.
So go for it President George W. Drag Tony away from his hideous plan to turn Britain into a bunch of European provinces. Win the war, but give the British army things to do in it which are chaotic, embarrassing, trivial, ridiculous, which expose the sorry state of the kit they now have to make do with, but which, although daft, are nevertheless entirely safe. Don’t get them killed in any big numbers. That would be too solemn, not farcical enough, not silly enough. Keep them all alive, so that they can then come home and tell everyone what a twat Tony is, and make him unable to drag us into Europe, ever. I know you can do this.
This Europe business is horrible. The natural state of an intelligent Englishman is to be telling the world what it should be thinking and doing, with no thought for the mere narrow interests of England. These can be taken care of as the separate and smaller matter that they are. How else is the world to know what it should do, if not guided by intelligent Englishmen such as me? Yet now I find myself deciding the fate of the world entirely according to whether its plans will or will not suit England. Dreadful. Utterly, utterly dreadful.
