Denis MacShane

Denis MacShane has said the question of whether Britain should join the euro is "economically irrelevant".

The Europe minister also said the government had made turned the issue into a "fetish".

In a New Statesman interview, MacShane said he would never have voted for the UK to adopt the Euro in the first term of a Labour government because of the exchange rate.

"Part of the problem was we entered the government making the euro a litmus test for being good Europeans," he said.

"It was a huge cul-de-sac because we had no technical or economic preparations to get anywhere close to euro entry in 1997."