Interesting Call:

Lord Leach: “Northern Europe should make a break for a new mark”
Writing in the Independent on Sunday, Open Europe’s Chairman Lord Leach argued, “EU leaders appear to be facing a stark choice: full fiscal union or fracture into many pieces…So is there a workable alternative to the dilemma of long-term depression in the EU's periphery, or uncontrolled currency disintegration? There is. Germany could leave the eurozone instead, taking Finland, the Netherlands and Austria with it to form a new triple-A German-mark zone. Exiting from the top in this manner would lead to far less panic, reducing the threat of bank runs and contagion”.
He continued, “Britain is not aloof from this choice. We have a powerful economic interest in the least bad financial outcome. We also have a deeper political interest in the democratic solution, which would go a long way to bringing Britain and the Continent into mutual sympathy. Britain has always wanted a Europe based on friendship and co-operation, not on forced and often unwelcome elimination of the diversity that has marked Europe's most enduring achievements. Rather than look on a eurozone break-up as a failure, it should be looked at as a harbinger of a new European settlement in which the wider interest is expressed by allowing citizens and parliaments to choose their own path, sometimes merging institutions, sometimes keeping them separate, as enlightened democracy dictates”.Independent on Sunday: Leach