Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cameron seeks to beef up ’emergency brake’ as eurosceptics fight each other

David Cameron and Donald Tusk have been discussing Britain’s beef with the European Union over a dinner of beef this evening. The European Council president has just left, telling reporters there was ‘no deal’.

Top of the Prime Minister’s menu was the issue of benefits that has been so chewy for him during his renegotiation. Cameron now appears to be seeking to beef up (sorry) the emergency brake offer that his eurosceptic critics described only on Friday as a ‘sick joke’, arguing that it must come into force straight after the referendum result, that the present levels of EU migration to the UK could be sufficient to trigger it, and that it can stay in place ‘long enough to resolve the underlying problem’. The emergency brake would function as a ‘stop gap’ until a more permanent solution can be found.

On the Sunday Politics today, Steve Baker, who is the co-chair of Conservatives for Britain, said that this was ‘not a powerful thing at all to take to the country’, that it wouldn’t make much difference to levels of migration, that it was a ‘red herring’, ‘undeliverable’ and a ‘bad joke’.

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