Blair, the Treasury and the Single Currency: Behind Closed Doors

Abstract

The review of conventional wisdom presented in the first half of this case study shows that there is scepticism about the Labour government’s own explanation of its policy on the single currency. Despite Prime Minister Blair’s and Chancellor Brown’s consistent emphasis on economic assessment being the basis for the government’s cautious approach to joining the euro zone, much is made of more political factors that may have influenced their handling of this issue. The limited search behind the scenes at the Treasury that has been conducted to date has come to the conclusion that that cynicism is not totally misplaced. Rather, the suggestion arising from that insight is that Treasury officials’ input was designed — at least in part — to provide cover for decisions already made for political reasons. And commentators point to evidence, as outlined in Chapter 2, that the traditional minister-official partnership was replaced under Blair by ‘sofa government’ involving ministers and political advisers but not officials — except the sofa where EMU policy was decided was that of Gordon Brown rather than Tony Blair.