So – it looks as if Britain won't be joining the euro for a while yet. Tony Blair is keen, Gordon Brown less so. More importantly, Rupert Murdoch's newspaper empire, which helped swing the British general election for Blair in 1997, isn't keen and the prime minister who ignores Mr Murdoch is a foolish prime minister. On the other hand, they say George Bush would quite like a pal on the inside of the European financial system, so maybe Rupert and George just about balance the thing evenly.
But most people here devoutly wish Tony would stop balancing and jump. Ask any businessman in Newry or Derry: a divided currency on an island this size makes no sense.
The Drogheda bypass opened this week and unblocked a traffic bottleneck between north and south. A single currency would do infinitely more to unblock the financial bottlenecks that presently inhibit all-Ireland trade.
Of course joining the euro is about more than trade, which is why Conversatives in Britain and unionists here resist it. They see the euro as sapping the sovereignty of Britain by linking it more firmly to the continent of Europe. The famous London Times headline caught their attitude well: 'Europe cut off from Britain by Channel fog'.
Yet ask the average English person if they consider themselves insular and they'll think you're joking. That's how they see the Irish, not themselves. Read English travel writers on Ireland, look at British TV programmes made about here – overwhelmingly the image of the Irish is of a pleasant but time-warped people, good at drinking and singing songs but lacking Britain's enlarged vision of the world. So insistent is this Irish myth, even some Irish people have bought into it.
But that's what it is – a myth. In the past 15 years, contact with Europe has transformed the 26 counties. David Trimble may treasure a view of that state as monocultural, etc, but the fact is that culturally as well as economically, Ireland has always shown far keener awareness of and enthusiasm for Europe than has Britain. You can see why. The link with mainland Europe has allowed the south to bypass Britain, freeing it psychologically as well as economically from the shadow of its big neighbour next door.
But then, because of their tradition of religious missionaries, the Irish have always had an outward-looking element in their make-up. Enlightened liberals today allow themselves a patronising smile when someone mentions the penny-for-the-black-babies box that appeared in so many Irish schools and shops in 1940s and 1950s and 1960s. They forget or ignore the fact that this humble collection gave Irish people a sense of a world beyond these shores, a world of people even less fortunate than themselves and to whose welfare they could contribute.
Today Bob Geldof and Bono, for all the hectoring of the first and the self-importance of the second, continue the penny-for-the-black-baby tradition – working for change in Africa, jogging Irish people and the rest of the world into awareness of the massive problems that continent still suffers under.
And doesn't the rest of the world – and perhaps Europe in particular – need reminding? When the people of the 26 counties voted No in the first Nice Referendum, they were accused of selfishness. Their critics said they had benefited from membership of the EU and were now slamming the door on the entry of poorer countries from Eastern Europe.
An odd charge, really. The EEC was created primarly to avoid future European wars, but it has developed and been sold as an economic club for the benefit of its members. That club may be about to expand dramatically, but the central question about such expansion is, 'Will it benefit the member states?' Not 'How can the EU help other countries?' When it is forced to address an external problem, like war in Iraq or famine in Africa, the weakness of the European vision becomes immediately apparent.
It doesn't know what it should do in the Middle East and it doesn't know what it should do in Africa. Compared to European vagueness, Mr Bush with his $20 billion for the relief of Aids in Africa looks positively enlightened.
The sooner the British embrace the euro and become true Europeans, the better for us, for them and for Europe. And the sooner Europe abandons its Fortress Europe mentality and becomes an anti-imperialist missionary to the rest of the world, the better for everyone.
