THE United Kingdom turned out to be a good European by not joining the euro zone. In the 1990s, when a few of us argued strongly that our country was not cut out to be in the euro zone, keen advocates of European unity tried to write us off as skeptics. They said it would be only a matter of time before the British people asked to join.

Instead, the doubts and fears we had about the euro unfortunately turned out to be true, reinforcing our sense that we needed a more independent status than other countries as Europe tried to unify.