Leaked minutes reveal a party short on ideas and low on confidence

It’s worth flagging up the minutes of a regional Labour Party meeting, dated 2 November, that have been leaked to Iain Dale. The first stand out passage shows the Labour Party’s reliance on Barack Obama as a source of inspiration:

‘Claude[Moraes MEP] has been to Washington DC where Obama administration key players made it clear they don’t want to have to deal with a Eurosceptic Tory Government here as they want to be able to deal with the EU as a whole.’

Iain argues that the claim has no basis in fact. But, as Daniel Korski pointed out recently, it is clear that the US administration would prefer to work with an assertive and united EU, not one embroiled in internal squabbles. Of course, that does not preclude Obama and the Tories co-operating closely as the governments of individual sovereign states.

It is very telling that Labour activists believe their best chance of wrong-footing Cameron on the potentially divisive EU issue is to allege that the US President has reservations about Conservative euroscpeticism.