Jeremy Warner's Outlook: Business must again make case for Europe

The euro is coming up for a series of 10th anniversaries. Understandably, there was little fanfare for yesterday's – the 10th anniversary of the Council of Ministers formally giving the single currency the go-ahead – especially in Britain, where the euro long ago vanished as a mainstream issue of public debate, or even of public interest beyond the shocking realisation of how much this year's Continental holiday is going to cost.

Related articles

• Jeremy Warner's Outlook: Ministers cannot win case for green taxes if they won't apply them to green causes
• Jeremy Warner's Outlook: A knighthood for Glaxo's JP, please

Bizarre, when you think back on how the single currency once tore the Conservative Party apart. For many years, it was about the only thing the Tories could think about.

At a conference on EU enlargement in London yesterday, Shriti Vadera, the minister for Business and Competitiveness, struggled to recall what government policy on the euro was at all. "I think it is that we always keep membership of the euro under review," she stumbled, before moving swiftly on. It scarcely needs saying that euro membership has not been seriously reviewed for years.

Nobody believes Britain will be joining the single currency any time soon, still less if, as seems ever more likely, the Conservatives form the next Government. It is impossible to believe the Conservatives could ever take Britain into the euro, even if under David Cameron the Tories have moved to the centre ground on just about everything else.

Despite Britain's semi-detached relationship with the Continent, the EU, nevertheless, continues to bring enormous benefits to these shores. The shame is that we have to be constantly reminded of it. In the main, the background noise is still anti-European, or at least highly suspicious of the EU and its role in the modern world.

Enlargement, which all of Britain's main political parties were in favour of, promised to change the dimensions of the debate, but just recently we seem again to have sunk back into worrying about the effects of mass labour migration on British jobs, society and cultural values. Space constraints prevent me from repeating the many positives Britain has derived from enlargement that were aired at yesterday's "Business for New Europe" conference, but here's an interesting thought from one of the speakers, Lucy Neville-Rolfe, the corporate and legal affairs director at Tesco.

Just as the influx of Poles and other Eastern European workers helped fill shortages in the labour force during the upswing, they are now acting as a useful shock absorber for the labour market as the economy slows, with many deciding to return home to the higher growth eco-nomies from which they came. With luck, it may mean Britain can survive more difficult times without the usual, steep rise in unemployment. This is how the single market is supposed to work, with labour migrating to where it is most in demand.

Historically, Britons have only really embraced Europe at times when they look across the Channel and see that living standards and quality of life are notably better over there than back here. That's been a difficult case to make over the past 10 years, but there is nothing like an economic downturn to reverse the tables and make Europe seem attractive again.

Interestingly, the British economy has rarely seemed more converged with the Continent than it is now, even if key differences still exist. Interest rates are closer, rates of growth are roughly the same, and even the exchange rate is at a level which invites entry into the single currency. Far from falling apart, as critics said it would, the euro has, meanwhile, successfully established itself as one of the world's most trusted currencies.

Single currency membership is not an issue of debate in Britain right now, but a few years of economic austerity might yet make it one again. Gordon Brown thought he had buried the euro for good with his five tests. I'm not so sure. It will take time, but late and on poor terms, Britain will eventually limp shame facedly into the single currency. It's only a question of when.