There is a sense of economic crisis in Britain as the recession looms. Such crisis moments tend to re-mold "common sense" ideas, with many orthodox economic assumptions proving highly vulnerable to revision in the wake of last autumn's financial meltdown. So could Britain's determination to remain outside the eurozone be the next orthodoxy to fail? It was an idea floated in the midst of the financial crisis by Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg premier and head of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, who was reported as saying that circumstances might prompt Britain to rethink its policy. Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has since repeated the idea. Looked at in political terms, how likely does this prospect seem?

Britain's official reasons for staying out of the eurozone were set down after "New Labour" took office in 1997. When Chancellor of the Exchequer, or finance minister, the country's current prime minister, Gordon Brown, established five key tests which would have to be met with "clear and unambiguous" evidence before Britain would consider joining the euro. These tests were defined in such a way that the prospect of membership was effectively removed from the short-term political agenda. The policy was often assumed to be more in tune with Brown's euro-skepticism than the ostensibly pro-European views of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair. So when Brown replaced Blair, it hardly seemed likely to herald another euro debate.

Yet there are now several reasons why the debate may return to the political agenda. First is the way that the current crisis is redefining prevailing economic attitudes. Confidence in the British economic model has been shattered, along with the grounds for its often lofty disdain towards rival continental models. The financial crisis has provoked heightened levels of interaction between E.U. governments and finance ministries, and while this has not always led to coordination, efforts at international management of the economy have rarely been more visible.