If the last year or so has proved anything, it's that staying outside of currency unions is a pretty good bet. The EU is finished. If anyone actually believes there will be a Euro in 10 years time, they are either self-interested to the point of being unable to make an objective judgement, or utterly delusional. The currency is doomed, and by extension, the EU is as well.

What Mr Cameron did on Friday morning was to not go far enough. He should have told Merkozy that we were going to veto the EU budget until we not only got the kind of safeguards for financial services that the French have for agriculture or the Spanish have for fisheries, but also received opt outs from EU agencies like the External Action Service, and repatriated powers over fisheries and farming.

There is no public appetite to engage in what was once a great and flourishing free trade union, but is now a declining, protectionist, over-regulated, over-taxed Franco-German experiment in extinguishing democracy and prosperity.

NAFTA membership would be an interesting prospect, but membership of the EFTA alone would be preferable. Britain's place in the world is as a small nation, trading with the world, without the shackles of the common external tariff, self-governing and competitive. Which is basically everything the Eurocrats are trying to extinguish.

I would propose leaving Mexico out and just going for some close association of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. All are very developed democracies. All have much in common in their culture and outlook. I would say the UK has more in common with this grouping of nations than it does Europe. In addition, the US and Canada have more in common and are on a more level basis economically and politically with this grouping of nations than with Mexico.

David Cameron threw a tantrum because he felt like Britain isn’t able to boss everybody around in Europe, why would that attitude suggest that Britain is willing to throw their independence out of the window and relinquish whatever influence they still have over other countries and become a minor, isolated US state? Not to mention that although the US and Britain speak the same language but the cultural differences are enormous. The prospect of joining a country in which same-sex marriage is shunned upon or in which the legality of abortion is still debated or in which capital punishment is still widely practised would make very many Brits shudder.

You either have a great gift for satire or you know absolutely nothing about the British and how they feel about North America (outside Canada and Mexico). They despise Americans so much that they export what they don't need to the rest of the world - including, but especially Canada and Mexico - inside bite-sized BBC programs. Their least offensive description of Americans is that they're are too ignorant to know that some people hate them.

You are an American, I presume.

I presume this was written at least partially in just. The idea of the U.K ever giving up the pound or even considering becoming part of the U.S is laughable enough, but the idea that Republicans would ever accept such a left-leaning nation (relative to the U.S) or that we would accept the monarchy would induce howls of laughter across the Americas.

Clyde,

You have a great sense of humor. Canada and the US may one day form a new union, but not the UK. The only way this would be possible would be with some sort of very autonomous statehood. Even this is a stretch though. The British love the pound sterling and I doubt they would ever give it up unless it appeared that the Yuan and Dollar dominated international trade to the point that they had no choice as their quality of living would shrink substantially due to a loss of competitiveness in global markets (which I think is unlikely). Lets also admit that Optimal Currency Zones are far harder to objectively form than in theory.

As far as British attitudes towards Americans goes, my experience from living in the UK would suggest that there is a wide variety of opinions out there. The UK liberals would be the hardest to convince. I've always believed that British animosity toward Americans is mostly because the British loath to admit to themselves just how much our two nations are alike. But that doesn't mean they would accept it.

"Washington could offer statehood to Britain, or separately to England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland."

Once we got to this part, I knew it was a joke. I think it would be the first time in history that a former colony annexed the old mother country (Was Rome ever a part of greater Greece before Greece was a part of the Roman Empire?). Of course, if the Brits are unwilling to join in what is still and may always remain, a rather loose confederation like the EU, the thought of Old England submitting to a tight and perpetual federation like the US is zero or below.

It is also interesting that Prestowitz implicitly criticizes the "mercantilist" attitude of continental Europe when he often advocates an "industrial policy" for the US. The EU as a whole has a considerable trade deficit with the rest of the world, so it isn't hard to guess that Prestowitz is thinking of ze Germans there. Germany's macro-economic philosophy is far closer to that of East Asia than to that of America and Britain. But it doesn't really mean they are against "free trade" any more than other countries. Because free traders tend to forget that the minute two countries have different minimum wages, there is no "free" trade. The playing field is tipped. And, finally, if Germany has an industrial policy, Prestowitz himself argues in his book "the betrayal of American prosperity" that America did too when it was a growing industrial power.

The idea that the United Kingdom would become part of the United States is ridiculous. Britain giving up the pound is just as ludicrous. I could maybe see them in NAFTA, but nothing more than that; and even joining NAFTA is a stretch.

The economic benefits are logical, and American and Canadian economic policies are closer in line to British policies than European ones are, but I'd imagine Britain would likely prefer to be on its own.

An entertaining article. I think the UK (and its constituent parts) will always prefer the idea of a looser political alliance. Of course, if the USA was to send Queen Elizabeth a big (I mean HUGE) bunch of flowers and ask to be readmitted to the fold, we might consider it.

The issue of a new currency is an interesting one, and a common currency throughout the Anglosphere (US, Canda, UK, and heck Aus, NZ etc) would have some advantages over, say, a currency area which has umpteen different languages and very different political and fiscal outlooks. This new currency would of course be called the Anglo or Anglodollar.

Does Prestowitz remember George Bernard Shaw's "The Apple Cart"? It's time for the play to be made into a film!

What Mr Cameron did on Friday morning was to not go far enough. He should have told Merkozy that we were going to veto the EU budget until we not only got the kind of safeguards for financial services that the French have for agriculture or the Spanish have for fisheries, but also received opt outs from accidentlawyers EU agencies like the External Action Service, and repatriated powers over fisheries and farming.