Black Wednesday cast a shadow that culminated in Brexit

The sterling crisis of 30 years ago reinforced Britain's ambivalence towards the European project

This 16 September will mark 30 years since Black Wednesday", when the British pound was ignominiously ejected from the exchange rate mechanism (ERM) of the European monetary mystem. Not all anniversaries are occasions for celebration. This one certainly is not.

Black Wednesday was a day of disaster" from which John Major's government never recovered. It had been Major, as chancellor of the exchequer in Margaret Thatcher's government, who led Britain into the ERM in 1990, overriding the objections of his balky prime minister.