The euro coins and noted were introduced on 1st January 2002.
Throughout 2001 and, I think, 2000, as the Blair Administration was deciding whether or not Britain should dump the pound and join the euro, Europhiles kept saying that Britain must join the euro because, if we don't, Britain would suffer economically whilst the euro countries would power ahead and that Frankfurt and even Paris would supplant London as financial centres. The europhiles were predicting all sorts of doom and gloom if we don't join the euro. In the end, the then Chancellor and future Prime Minister Gordon Brown decided that Britain WON'T join the euro - one of the few things he got right as Chancellor - and now we can see what a wise decision that was. The euro has turned out to be an absolutely disaster for almost every country that adopted it whilst Britain has been booming economically, outpacing France and Germany and most other EU nations, and London, rather than being overtaken by Frankfurt and Paris as financial centres, has instead merely pulled further ahead of them, so we can see that Britain had a lucky escape by not joining the euro and all those europhiles who predicted disaster for Britain should she not join the euro have been proven massively wrong.
Now a similar thing is happening in the run up to the EU in/out referendum. Yet again we are being told that only doom and disaster would befall Britain should she decide to leave the EU - that the economy would suffer and there'd be plagues of locusts etc etc etc. But these europhiles were massively wrong when it came to the euro and I've no doubt they're massively wrong again.
