Oh grow up

摘要

RATHER as jumping into swimming pools from hotel balconies has become a compulsive fad among some young holiday-makers, macho displays of Euroscepticism are a rite of passage for many Conservative mps. But even by the Tory party s standards, this week s antics were staggeringly self-indulgent: pointless, confected-and dangerous. Give the Eurosceptics their due: their views that Britain should stay out of the euro, and that its design was flawed, have been vindicated. But being proved right has only enraged them further. This week the House of Commons voted on whether a referendum should be held asking if the country should remain in the European Union, leave, or renegotiate the terms of its membership (see page 57). The motion was defeated, but, astonishingly, almost half of David Cameron's backbench mps defied his call for them to vote against it. The eccentric timing of this debate-held as the euro zone struggles to avoid meltdown-was only its most glaring failing. Renegotiation is not reasonable Europe and referendums have become ineluctably linked in the Tory imagination. But the one mooted this week could yield no useful answer. To restate what ought to be obvious: weak as some of the continent's economies now look, the benefits of being part of the world's biggest and richest common market still outweigh the costs. If Britain left, its trade (49% of exports go to the eu) would suffer. Foreign direct investment would collapse. Lots of much-reviled eu regulations would simply be replaced by domestic ones, quite possibly equally burdensome. And so on.