Keynes and the Brexit

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Writes Robert Skidelsky, biographer and resuscitator of the work and aura of John Maynard Keynes:

Like Churchill, Keynes supported the idea of some sort of European Union to avert another war. He looked forward to a European federation of independent states forming an economic and currency unit. But the point was he did not see Britain as part of it.

Would he have later endorsed Harold Macmillan’s original application for membership of the European Economic Community in 1962 and the terms eventually negotiated by Edward Heath in 1972? Possibly. But there is nothing in his own history to suggest that he would have accepted unconditionally the four freedoms of capital, goods, services and labour—which after the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 came to define the European project. Indeed, he envisaged capital controls as a necessary and permanent part of the international monetary system.

And he would certainly have wanted to keep Britain out of the eurozone. Because, above all, he would have wanted to retain the commitment to full employment. If this was not possible at the European level, and he would have doubted if there was enough theoretical and institutional support for this, then national policy must be free to secure it.

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