FUTURE WILL NOT BE PLAIN SAILING FOR THE STRUGGLING EUROZONE

THERE are lies, damned lies and statistics, said Disraeli, and he has been held as a very witty fellow for saying it. The trouble is, it’s not true. Statistics are figures and figures do not lie unless they are manipulated to make them appear to lie.

There is an official British body called the Office for National Statistics which tries to retrieve facts from a vast jungle of figures and its latest report is worrying. There are 12 regions in the UK: these are the three of the Celtic Fringe (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland); London (which includes just about everything within the M25 orbital motorway) and eight English provincial regions. In tax revenue just three – London, the South-east and East – pay for the other nine. But for the huge wealth being generated in the South-east of England they would all be bankrupt.

It works for the UK simply because of the letter “U” in our title. United. The people of the south do not rise in revolt at these massive fiscal transfers of wealth away from the South-east.

But across the Channel there is a similar situation. In euro-theory no one minds the enormous German surpluses being transferred to the poorer regions of the zone. But the concept of nation cannot be so easily suppressed.

Since East and West Germany were united in 1990, hundreds of billions have been transferred from rich west of Germany to its communism-impoverished eastern third. The Westies grumbled but accepted. But in 27 years most Germans (despite a corps of Eurofanatics) have objected to their wealth going anywhere else. More than a generation after the birth of the eurozone, the Germans dominate the continent because they dominate the currency but they refuse to share with Greece which labours in poverty.

Britain is leaving not a galleon under full sail but a very leaky ship indeed.