The politicians who got it wrong on the euro are not being called to account, because the media made the same mistake

Wrong, wrong, wrong - though it's apparently indelicate to remind anyone of the fact

We know who got it wrong about the euro. And we know who got it right.

Here are some of my favourite quotations:

The reality of the euro has exposed the absurdity of many anti-European scares while increasing the public thirst for information. Public opinion is already changing as people can see the success of the new currency on the mainland. (Kenneth Clarke MP, 2002)

The euro, despite gloomy predictions from anti-Europeans, has proved to be a success. We cannot afford to be isolated from our biggest and closest trading partner any longer. (Charles Kennedy, 2002)

If we get rid of sterling and adopt the euro, we will also get rid of sterling crises and sterling overvaluations. This will give us a real control over our economic environment. (Chris Huhne, 2004)

The euro has done more to enforce budgetary discipline in the rest of Europe than any number of exhortations from the IMF or the OECD. (Nick Clegg, 2002)

It goes without saying, of course, that these men are still deferred to on the BBC as impartial experts, while those of us who called the euro correctly are patronized as doctrinaire obsessives.

Perhaps this is because many of the commentators were themselves every bit as wrongheaded as the politicians. Here (hat-tip, Open Europe) is the FT’s Wolfgang Muchau in 2006:

There is not the slightest danger of a break-up of the Eurozone. On the contrary, I expect the Eurozone to be exceptionally stable in the long run. Make no mistake, the Eurozone is here to stay.

And here is as recently as 2008:

The world’s two large reserve currencies, the dollar and the euro, offer more protection from speculative attack than a free-floating offshore currency unit. The UK will at some point have to make a choice whether it wants to be in the Eurozone or whether it wants to seek an alternative use for those rather tall buildings in the heart of London.

Here, even more hilariously, is the BBC’s Robert Peston as recently as two weeks ago:

Only in the event that the Portuguese financial crisis exhausted the available money in the eurozone’s bail out fund – which it won’t – would the UK become liable.

Ah, well. If there’s one thing that politics teaches you, it’s that there is no prize for being right too early, nor any penalty for being wrong provided you’re part of a middle-ground consensus. Still, I can’t resist finishing with one more quotation, this one from the German Chancellor last year.

We have a Treaty under which there is no possibility of paying to bailout states.

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