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		Football broadens the mind Lincolnshire Echo - March 27 2003 On Saturday March 29th, England will play Lichtenstein in the European Championship. Lichtenstein is one of those places that scarcely registers on our radar screens. Less familiar than Monaco, or even Andorra, it could be a fanciful name from a comic opera, like Ruritania. But in fact it's a very successful little country. Sandwiched between Switzerland and Austria, it is a Principality of 100 square miles, with a population of 33,000. And its per-capita GDP, at US$23,000 is very close to the UK and Germany. We in Britain are constantly being told that we are too small to survive outside the euro-zone -- that unless we join the euro, we will be "isolated" and forgotten, our economy will wither, inward investment will dry up, jobs will be lost. So it is salutary to consider countries like Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and -- yes -- Lichtenstein, that seem to do very well, thank you, outside both the EU and the Euro. All these countries are rather successful. All have GDP figures similar to, or higher than, the euro-zone. If small countries are isolated and unsuccessful, no one seems to have mentioned it to these small countries! I spent fifteen very happy months living in Singapore in 1994/5. It has only around three million people, but it is no backward Asian country. It is a shining example of a twenty-first century city-state. White towers reach skywards. Everything is clean, everything works. There is little crime and virtually no unemployment. And again, per-capita GDP is higher than the euro-zone. When the Malay peninsula was de-colonised by Britain in 1962, Singapore was a part of the newly-independent country. Far from seeking to join a larger grouping, Singapore decided to go its own way, with its own currency. It has been a huge success. Britain is vastly bigger than any of these countries. We are a great trading nation. Nearly sixty million people. The second largest EU economy (after Germany) and the second largest global investor (after the USA). It is simply incredible that Britain should be "isolated" outside the euro-zone, when Switzerland and Singapore, so much smaller, manage very well. Confronted with these facts, the euro-luvvies resort to special pleading. "Norway's wealth is based on oil", they say. Well we have our oil too. "Norway and Iceland have enormous fisheries". Well so had we, before Edward Heath gave them away to Europe in 1973, in one of the greatest acts of betrayal in recent history. "Switzerland is a major international banking centre", they add defensively. So what do they think London is? By this time the luvvies are usually spitting blood and throwing their toys out of their prams. True, Lichtenstein, like the Isle of Wight, is too small to have its own independent currency, so it uses the Swiss Franc. It is not what economists call an "optimal currency area", because it is too small. The euro-zone, on the other hand, also fails to qualify as an optimal currency area, not because it is too big, but because it is too diverse. A monetary policy which is right for, say, Ireland, is clearly not right for Germany, as four million unemployed Germans can testify. The idea that a monetary policy that is right for Portugal can also be right for, say, Slovenia, is not just misguided -- it is bizarre. So let's wish our England soccer team the best of luck in Lichtenstein. (I have never had a great interest in football, but I love to see England win). And let's learn the lesson that a great global trading nation like Britain not only can manage with its own currency -- it positively must have its own currency to manage its economy effectively. With acknowledgements to Mr. Worracker of Peterborough, and to Dan Hannan MEP, who contributed ideas to this piece.