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[/audioplayer]We have just had a very insular general election campaign, but the mood at Westminster is now determined by news from foreign capitals. There was a flurry of excitement last Wednesday when the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schaüble, suggested linking the British renegotiation to eurozone reform. It led to much talk of a European ‘Grand Bargain’, with Germany and the northern European countries given greater supervision of eurozone finances, the French and the southern Europeans given an explicit, written commitment to ‘solidarity’ within the currency union, and the British offered single-market protections, an opt-out from ‘ever closer union’ and the welfare changes it wants.
If this deal could be secured, a major Tory split over Europe would be averted. In these circumstances, 80 per cent of Tory MPs would back staying in, according to one experienced Eurosceptic campaigner.
But the weekend ended on a very different note. The French press reported that François Hollande and Angela Merkel had agreed a deal on eurozone integration which did not involve treaty change, removing Britain’s negotiating leverage. Cue much Tory grumbling about how treaty change, or at least a commitment to it, was vital to the success of the renegotiation.
In truth, things were not as good for Cameron and the renegotiation as they appeared on Wednesday, nor as bad as they looked on Monday. Over the next few months, the political class will tend to respond to every pronouncement from a European leader in the same herd-like manner that it did to opinion polls during the election campaign.
No. 10 is braced for such over-reactions. It is why Cameron has said that there’ll ‘be ups and downs — you’ll hear one day this is possible, the next day something else is impossible’.
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