After spending so many years pointing out Gordon Brown’s tricks and deceits, I had hoped for a bit of a retirement when George Osborne took office. No such luck. The Chancellor seems to have learned too much from his old nemesis and seems unable to resist stretching the truth – sometimes until the elastic snaps. So it proved with yesterday’s EU negotiation.
The Chancellor is blowing smoke, but it seems that the £1.7 billion bill has been halved automatically by the application of the UK rebate – in the same way that previous adjustments have been halved automatically by the UK rebate. Osborne’s achievement – a smaller, but genuine one – was to delay the payment.
Osborne should have said:-
‘I’m delighted that the EU have confirmed that the UK rebate, negotiated by Margaret Thatcher in 1984, will apply to this £1.7bn bill, as it does to all bills. This mechanism halves the amount to £850m. Moreover, the rebate will be applied a year earlier – next year, rather than 2016.
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