It’s too late now, but the whole matter should have been subjected ages ago to the rigours of an independent Royal Commission, or something akin to Gordon Brown’s “Five Tests”, a comprehensive, evidence-based inquiry into whether it made sense to join the euro. These tests were authoritative enough in their conclusions to settle the matter once and for all.

A few years back, I revisited some of the papers produced in support of the tests. They didn’t exactly predict the Eurozone crisis, but they came quite close in identifying the dangers of a one size fits all monetary policy for Europe, the inadequacy of the institutions that lay behind the new currency, and the lack of flexibility it left in responding to economic shocks.

All these concerns were to play out in the banking and sovereign debt crises of later years. The tragedy is that in signing up for the doomsday machine of monetary union participating nations failed to apply the same impartial economic analysis to what they were getting themselves into. Instead, they allowed blind enthusiasm for the European ideal to cloud their economic judgment.

"The speculative nature of these musings demonstrates just how difficult it is to disentangle the economic from the political and diplomatic"

Confusingly, the continued existence of the euro provides Britain with strong economic arguments both for leaving and for staying in the EU. If the single currency is to survive in its current form, it requires a very high degree of further economic and political integration. To the extent that these requirements also infect Britain, they will almost certainly run counter to her independent economic interests. By leaving, the UK would insulate itself from these demands. Yet by staying, Britain retains some influence, and therefore might better protect its interests against the emerging German-led hegemon on its doorstep. In the event of an eventual break-up of the euro, which still seems a likely outcome given the lack of any popular appetite for further integration, Britain would also have the opportunity to reshape the EU in its own image.