A eurozone break-up: Why you should care

I quote from Martin Wolf of the Financial Times: “What is at stake today is not only the stability of the European – perhaps the world’s – economy, but the survival of the most successful – and certainly most civilised – effort to unite Europe since the fall of the western Roman empire 1,535 years ago." Hear hear.

As one whose grandfather and father fought and survived a world war, first and second, I can breath a huge sigh of relief that as I enter my 59th year I have not yet had to participate in the third and I suppose in large part this has been brought about by closer political unity – one of the primary reasons cited by europhiles for the need to further the project. But this has come at a huge cost.

The agenda of the federalist elite is not to create an egalitarian utopia for the masses, it is the relentless struggle for power. The idea that there is a benign struggle for power against one that is nakedly malign is naïve.

I don’t doubt that to break up the euro will have far-reaching and painful consequences, but it is very interesting that the creation of it was apparently devoid of such problems. It is like investors worrying themselves sick because markets are plummeting when they should be equally worried when they are going up.

There is a Europe (and indeed a world) that can peacefully co-exist on foreign policy and trade agreements without worrying that the absence of an immense, unelectable bureaucracy and an artificial currency risks another war.

Neil Shillito is director of SG Wealth Management. The views expressed here are his own.