I wonder if EU would let UK join without adopting the Euro. The UK seems to have lost a lot of its negotiating power that let them keep the GBP the first time.
> I wonder if EU would let UK join without adopting the Euro. The UK seems to have lost a lot of its negotiating power that let them keep the GBP the first time.
If the UK rejoined (assuming it was welcome after the last few years) I find myself wondering if forcing us (I'm British) to go all the way - into the Euro and onwards to full participation in everything - might actually be a good idea.
There are some aspects which taken in isolation may not be that great an idea (eg a Euro which includes such a variety of economies), but contrast that with the last approx half century where we've been the wall-fly. The one who goes to the dance, but hangs around the edges and never really joins in.
Half-hearted commitment can often be worse than none at all, and being forced to commit fully in order to be able to rejoin may well be the making of a better UK that takes it seriously and helps drive things forward.
What the UK had before was pretty much "EU membership the good parts" - and (a slim majority of) the public rejected that. Is full membership really possible?
That was a slim majority of who voted at the time. Leave voters heavily skewed older. Even just taking out the people who have died since the vote would result in a remain vote. 15 years worth of younger voters would overwhelmingly vote for remain.
Half the countries in the EU don't use the Euro. Many economists recommend against a currency union without possibility of fiscal transfers to deal with asymmetric shocks, predicting what happened in the years after 2008.
