The Supra-State, Governance and Global Processes

Abstract

During the run-up to the UK’s spring 1997 parliamentary General Election, the contesting political parties variously set out their stalls on a range of issues while, without exception, prominently displaying their views on the UK’s part in the process of European integration by way of the progress of the European Union. For instance, John Major, prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party, attempted to ‘push the threat to British jobs posed by the EU’s social chapter into the forefront of the […] election campaign with an attack on [the] Labour [Party] for wanting to import a ‘‘Trojan Horse’’ that would supposedly bring industry to its knees’ (White, 4 February 1997; see also Palmer and White, 5 February 1997; and Kampfner, 1997). At the same stage in the election campaign, Robin Cook, the Labour Party’s shadow Foreign Secretary, fuelled the debate about the UK’s participation in the programme of European economic and monetary union (EMU) entailing the introduction of a European single currency, planned for January 1999,¹ by letting it be known that a ‘Labour government would take sterling into a European single currency by 2002 if it proved to be ‘‘stable’’ ‘ by then (Parker and Peston, 3 February 1997): ‘Echoing comments made by [Hiroshi Okuda, the president of Toyota], the shadow foreign secretary warned that Britain would lose out on inward investment if it stayed outside the single currency in the longer term’.².