And yet, only two decades later, the European left has made the identical calculation. The imposition of the euro, and the rigid economic policy a single currency implies, is having socially catastrophic effects across much of Europe on a scale that dwarfs Britain's suffering in the 1990s.

So the euro is a plot of the "European left"? Like Helmut Kohl? And the european left is in power in all eurozone countries today, as we well know...

Before their decision to abandon economic sovereignty and sign up to the euro...

Yeah, eurozone countries have no control over their budet - at all!

Britain, mercifully outside the euro thanks mainly to John Major's brave, far-sighted and universally denounced decision to opt out of monetary union when he signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992.

Yeah, I'm sure the Telegraph and the Sun were all in favor of joining the euro then...

There is a universal belief among the European political and economic elite that the euro will continue, no matter how much damage it inflicts or how many jobs it costs. George Papandreou, the socialist prime minister of Greece, insists that a return to the drachma will never happen. So does Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank. So do Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, the US Treasury, the Bilderberg group and, for what it is worth, the British foreign office.

Ooooh - Bilderberg, Goldmans, and evil bureaucrats everywhere...

Economically, the euro can be spotted a mile off: it is a classic bankers' ramp. It is designed to do all the things that bankers have historically wanted: create efficient markets, drive down the cost of labour, impose price stability, eliminate trade barriers, confound national boundaries and maximise corporate profits. Bankers don't care much about youth unemployment in Madrid or home repossessions in Lisbon or riots on the streets of Athens.

Now this is suddenly interesting. A populist anti-neolib tirade from a violent euroskeptic. A sign of the things to come, as the mainstream left fails to express the disgust of the middle classes with the current fianncial shananigans (which have little to do with the euro, and a lot to do with City of London lobbying in Europe...)

There remains, however, that irritating little contradiction between the calamity that is hitting home on the streets, housing estates and industrial parks of Europe and the bourgeois comfort and intellectual certainty of the international capitalist class.

So, mainstream left = international capitalist class?

One problem is that if democratic parties such as the PSOE [Spanish socialist workers' party], with its profound popular legitimacy, are inhibited from engaging with the most burning question of our time they are creating space that will be filled by others. So it is unlikely to be a coincidence that in last summer's elections in Portugal, the hard left secured 11% of the vote or that riots are now endemic to the streets of Athens. Elite disengagement is a gift to extremist nationalist parties of the type that has flourished over the past 150 years. The political class is gambling that politics as we knew it during the 20th century has been negated by the postwar architecture of the EU.

History teaches us they that they are certainly wrong. Elite constructions such as the EU may sometimes be able to treat the voters with disdain, but never the markets - and the brutal truth is that the crisis is about to get worse.

So, are European politicians going to be punished by the hard left, or by markets? This is getting a bit confusing...

The problem would still be just about manageable if there were political unity in Europe. Germany would then be ready to make the massive fiscal transfers necessary to bail Spain out of its difficulties - just as the City always does for disadvantaged areas of Britain during a recession.

Riiiight. It's the City that bailed out the rest of Britain in the past year...

In the medium term, economies like Greece and Spain are certain to break away from the euro. The refusal of the political elites to recognise this inevitability means that 2010 is going to be very painful, very bloody and very dangerous.

ok.

Quite a wild ride. Is this what passes as the intellectual left in the UK today? It's published in the Guardian, after all...

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes