The EU's Marxist Utopianism - Lord Ryder of Wensum 10:55am 25/11/11

From the Hansard record of the House of Lord's debate last Friday, linked here, comes these gems:

   I observe a slight Utopian resemblance between the European project and Marxism. When the failure of their creed is pointed out to Marxists, they invariably respond by claiming that it has never been tried in its correct form. The same excuse is offered by proponents of the European project. Day after day, as the project dithers to a halt, we hear that the absence of fiscal and even political union caused the eurozone breakdown. Now I read that even our Prime Minister and Chancellor are in favour of fiscal union. I wonder whether they know what it entails. Fiscal union requires a centralised treasury, shared tax and spending, common sovereign debt, huge transfers of cash from north to south and, of course, the ECB to act as lender of the last resort. I expect the Prime Minister and Chancellor are confusing fiscal union with what the Commission and Mrs Merkel call a stability union, whereby stronger discipline and convergence will be imposed in the European Union. They say that member states would be obliged to submit draft budgets to Brussels before they are introduced to sovereign Parliaments. This is part one of the plan to prolong the life of the eurozone. However it will not survive, if ever it exists, because the debt markets will behave like the currency market did over the narrow band exchange rate mechanism 19 years ago.