When prime ministers fall victim to their backbenchers
NICK CLEGG ‘UNHAPPY’ WITH DAVID CAMERON
Press Association report in The Times today
Cabinet divisions over Europe were laid bare yesterday as Nick Clegg revealed he was “bitterly disappointed” with David Cameron’s resort to Britain’s veto in Brussels.
Amid undisguised fury from senior Liberal Democrats, the Deputy Prime Minister said he had told Mr Cameron the result of last week’s European Council summit was “bad for Britain”.
Mr Clegg, who on Friday gave carefully-worded approval to the Prime Minister’s actions, yesterday pointed out that Mr Cameron had failed to bring back any new safeguards for the UK economy.
“I’m bitterly disappointed by the outcome of last week’s summit, precisely because I think now there is a danger that the UK will be isolated and marginalised within the European Union,” he told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show.
“I don’t think that’s good for jobs, in the City or elsewhere, I don’t think it’s good for growth or for families up and down the country.”
Asked what he had told the Prime Minister in a 4am telephone call on Friday morning, the Lib Dem leader said: “I said this was bad for Britain. I made it clear that it was untenable for me to welcome it.”
Mr Clegg made plain his frustration at the influence on Mr Cameron of eurosceptic Tory MPs, who have been jubilantly praising the Prime Minister’s “bulldog spirit” in vetoing a new EU treaty at the summit.
“There’s nothing bulldog about Britain hovering somewhere in the mid Atlantic, not standing tall in Europe, not being taken seriously in Washington.”
The Deputy Prime Minister said if he had been at the summit then “of course things would have been different”.
“I’m not under the same constraints from my parliamentary party that clearly David Cameron is,” he said.
“What David Cameron clearly needed was to bring something back to show that safeguards were secure, and that didn’t happen.”
His comments fuelled Labour accusations that Mr Cameron was looking after the interests of his backbenchers, who are desperate to see the Government renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU or withdraw altogether. Mr Clegg dismissed any suggestion of the coalition breaking up over the disagreements but made clear he would not allow the UK to leave the EU.
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Comment from The Telegraph:
‘Britain will be as isolated as the man who refuses to board the Titanic as she sets sail from Southampton’.
Imagine Malta outside the Eurozone or even worse, the EU.
To say there were those who did all they could to keep us out. Perhaps they would be on the phone with the BNP or the UK independents to agree to a pincer attack on Brussels.
Clegg has been risking alienating his party’s base till now on many controversial government decisions.
It’s mean to task him on his loyalty to the government when everybody but the euro-skeptics within the conservative party has been saying the same thing.
The truth is that Cameron has a weak chin. He vacillated at the early hours fearing a revolution in his party. He acquiesced to leaving the discussion table. For good or bad, he cannot influence the proceedings from now on.
Maybe not the best to support my argument but I’ll leave it here for those who missed it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16133286
The truth is that Cameron was caught between a rock and a hard place.
Had he played along, the 27 would have gone for a new treaty, which, because of his electoral pledges to pacify the fervent Euro-sceptics within his party, would have meant a vote in the Commons at best or a referendum at worst to have it ratified.
I guess he was fully aware that he did not have enough firepower to wield to see the new treaty through. It would have probably cost him the government.
So instead he chose to walk away and tried to give the impression that he stood up to the big bad Germans (which always goes down well with a growing section of the British public.
But in reality, it was a lose-lose situation. I pity him because he’s not a bad chap.
It wasn’t a lose-lose situation at all. It was more a win-in-Europe, lose-at-home situation.
Cameron’s official excuse/reason for his veto, that he was protecting the City, makes no sense at all. What is he protecting it from? Europe? In any case, the UK’s membership of the EU is the reason the City became so powerful in the first place.
The real reason behind Cameron’s decision, I fear, is the same one that almost kept us out of Europe: the crass ignorance of the chattering classes, coupled with a peculiarly British jingoism among the elite.
Yeah sure… I dare you to try selling that argument to any Briton at the moment. They all think that the British economy is self-made and that they’re the financial powerhouse of Europe, when in fact a good chunk of the mess we’re in was baked by the City.
Yes. The Tory position is that the City is being protected from Europe. Cameron maintains that Merkozy et al plan to legislate such that business will be able to be diverted from the City to mainland Europe, at heavy unbearable cost to the British economy.
The idea is that by not acquiescing to the new treaty, and thus not being subject to the proposed legislation, the City stands more of a sporting chance of survival whilst euroland inevitably disintegrates.
Undoubtedly the eurosceptics have influenced Cameron in arriving at this momentous decision. It’s a complex issue, and time alone will tell wether the right decision has been taken.
I don’t have to sell that argument. I’ll just print it on a giant streamer attached to my Fokker (just to rub it in) and fly over London once the UK leaves the EU.
Then I’ll let the impoverished, unemployed masses (formerly top earners in financial institutions) make up their own minds.
They’ll be clamouring to be let back in. And this time round, it won’t be a veto but unconditional surrender.
The UK needs Europe more than Europe needs the UK. Even in the one thing they’re really good at – fighting wars – they’ve always been the ones to hold back European integration.
Britain thinks, erroneously, that its interests don’t coincide with those of the continent.
One only has to remember what happened to its manufacturing base, something Europe intends to avoid, and with Draghi and Monti in place, the balance has shifted.
It becomes preposterous today, to maintain a strategic policy based on privileged relations with a weakened US and if anything, the Eurozone has amplified this difference. The US itself is turning its back on Britain, albeit an ideological preference.
How exactly does Britain intend to create jobs? If growth is the maintenance of dole seekers, it carries burdens beyond the capacity of any coalition in power. But then, Britain always reserved a right to its own strain of power and the production of wealth.
No wonder they want to defend the city.
Nick Clegg ain’t no backbencher, he is a coalition partner.
[Daphne – ?]
This is the bit you missed:
His comments fuelled Labour accusations that Mr Cameron was looking after the interests of his backbenchers, who are desperate to see the Government renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU or withdraw altogether.
Shawn, I don’t think Daphne’s referring to Nick Clegg. The backbenchers here are the Euro-sceptic Tories, i.e. persons in Cameron’s own party, not the Lib-Dems.
Mula – read the whole thing again.
Shaun Mula, you understood nothing.
What’s your opinion on what Cameron did, Daphne?
[Daphne – I think it’s self-explanatory, in the choice of title and article upload. I uploaded this PA report to save myself the trouble of saying it all over again.]
According to the BBC, William Hague has said that David Cameron’s negotiating position had been agreed upon beforehand with the coalition.
I can’t understand what Cameron (or rather still, Britain) has to gain by resorting to veto a new treaty.
It seems to me that unfortunately, Britain’s economy isn’t doing so great either.
What if Cameron’s game plan was to divert financial dealings from mainland Europe to Britain by those who want to avoid the new transaction tax that is being proposed ?
“Better to be a British bulldog drifting on an island in the Atlantic than a poodle in Brussels” – Mark Pritchard (MP Con).
This is the true great British spirit embodied, as fate would have it, in the momentous decisions that historically have befallen the Tory party to make.
I can’t agree with most of the comments here. I’m actually amazed that there are 26 countrues who have so far agreed to having to submit their budgets to the EU for approval and face punitive measures if they don’t reach 0.5% deficit levels. Some of these countries faced riots at home for implementing austerity measures with much more modest targets! I predict that, in spite of the apparent unity of the 26, we’ll be seeing more and more of them fall by the wayside before the treaty is actually signed (if it ever is).
As to Britain, the guarantees it asked for were really quite modest and reasonable, I thought. Part of the ‘City’ argument (i.e. Tobin tax) is actually a concern we share in Malta. Other requests included a guarantee that Britain could impose higher levels of regulation on its own banks than those agreed in the EU, as well as allowing the City to trade in Euros (apparently it can trade in any currency except Euros at the moment).