Just Say “No” to the Single Currency

As a child, he lived three years in Poland. He has worked in Russia and has a Russian girlfriend. His favorite European city? Naples. (“It’s beautiful, chaotic, no tourists.”) But Dominic Cummings, natural born European, spends most waking hours trying to keep Britain from joining the euro.

He’s good at it, too. The tiny lobby group Business for Sterling, of which he is campaign director, has repeatedly derailed Labour’s fearsome public relations machine in its efforts to make euro membership look desirable and inevitable. Polls show that two-thirds of British voters now want to retain the pound.

Of course, Cummings has had rich soil to cultivate. Britons remain skeptical about the E.U.’s progressive pooling of national sovereignty, as one might expect from an island nation whose defining moments, from Waterloo to the Battle of Britain, have come from fighting Continental hegemons. Unlike the British tabloids, Cummings never descends to blasting nonexistent Brussels directives that supposedly compel straight bananas and cucumbers. But he does use all the techniques of modern politics — systematic fertilization of grassroots support, instant response to news, slick website, skillful ads — to convince both the intelligentsia and voters that relinquishing a national currency, especially control of interest rates, will lose Britain more than it gains. The key campaign slogan — “Europe Yes, Euro No” — has blunted Prime Minister Tony Blair’s push to paint all keep-the-pound forces as crazies who want to pull Britain out of the E.U. altogether.

Rangy and intense, Cummings comes from the gritty city of Durham where his father and uncles own a nightclub. While studying history at Oxford his summer job was sweeping floors and serving drinks in the family business. After graduation he sought adventure and profit in Russia, working with a friend to secure an international route for a Russian airline. Two years later, he concluded the country was too corrupt for normal business and came back to London.

Cummings thinks single currency advocates can’t square their dark predictions for Britain outside the euro with its current boom, including buoyant inward investment. He fears the euro will actually hurt European stability, because if a recession hits, a single interest rate will exacerbate unemployment in some countries, to the benefit of far-right rabble-rousers: “As a pro-European, I don’t want to see Europe go backwards.” So soon after Blair is re-elected, expect Cummings to orchestrate a big, well-funded campaign to convince Blair he can never win the euro referendum he would love to call.