David cameron

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Was the PM reasonable?

As the effects of last week’s European Council become clear, debate about the rights and wrongs of David Cameron’s diplomacy hinge on one question: were his demands ‘reasonable and modestly expressed’, as a source in No 10 put it to me? Everyone knows that there were chronic failures in the run-up to the meeting itself. I laid a few of them out in an earlier post, but, basically, they amount to a failure of prioritisation: the UK eroded the goodwill it needed by fighting tooth-and-nail on every issue beforehand, thereby blocking things that other EU states care about but which are not important, except symbolically, to the British. International —

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Where we are now

Reading through the paper’s this morning, it’s even clearer that we didn’t learn much from that marathon Europe debate yesterday. But here are my thoughts, anyway, on where it leaves us: 1) Ed Miliband lacked credibility from the outset. As Malcolm Rifkind put it, he’s had three days to work out whether he’d have signed that Treaty or not — and he still can’t make his mind up. God knows Cameron is vulnerable on this, but he won’t be hurt being attacked for indecision by a man who still cant make any decisions. 2) Clegg’s misjudgment, cont? First, Clegg backed Cameron after the veto. Now, he says he disagrees with

Monday

James Forsyth

Clegg ducks Cameron’s conciliatory speech

The text of David Cameron’s statement on the European Summit was clearly designed as balm for the coalition’s wounds. He devoted a large chunk of it to defending Britain’s membership of the European Union in a clear effort to reassure the Lib Dems about the future direction of European policy. But this effort was rather undermined by the absence of the deputy Prime Minister. This was, predictably,  the story of the session. In response to repeated Labour questions about where Clegg was, Cameron replied ‘I’m not responsible for his whereabouts. I’m sure he is working very hard.’ Nick Clegg has now given a TV interview in which he has escalated

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Expect today’s eurosceptic celebrations to be muted

The real Tory celebration of David Cameron’s veto will be on Wednesday. Then, behind closed doors, Cameron will address the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers. With no Lib Dems present, the Tories will be able to thump the desks and be rude about the EU without worrying about what their coalition partners might think. But in the chamber today, Tory MPs are being urged to be calm and forensic. The whips keep pointing out to ambitious MPs that a question on what Labour’s position is would be most helpful. Eurosceptics, though, should be in good cheer today even if Cameron’s statement is more downbeat than they would like. The veto

Peter Hoskin

The new premium on Lib Dem policies

Could it be an accident of timing that the government, in the shape of Sarah Teather, is announcing an expansion of the pupil premium today? Or is it part of a careful response to David Cameron’s adventures in Euroland? In any case, the Lib Dem-devised scheme to help the poorest pupils will be extended in 2012-13, so that both the amount given to each pupil and the number of pupils eligible are increased. What’s not clear yet is whether this was planned all along, or whether it’s because of some previously unforeseen slack in the existing £1.25 billion budget for next year. The pupil premium has, for instance, already been

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s winning the popularity contest over Europe

It’s no surprise that David Cameron’s actions in Brussels last week appear to be popular with the voting public, but it is significant nonetheless. The Times is carrying a Populus poll today (£) which suggests just how difficult Labour and the Lib Dems will find it to recapture ground over the Continent. 57 per cent of respondents say that ‘David Cameron was right to exercise Britain’s veto’, against only 14 per cent who believe he was wrong to do so. And it turns out that 49 per cent of the folk who voted Lib Dem at the last election support the PM too. With one particular exception (which we shall

Sunday

Daniel Korski

The government’s Sarkozy problem (and other euro dilemmas)

This week’s European Council meeting has been analysed by diplomats and commentators alike, but a number of issues have not been brought out as clearly as they need to be. The first is that Britain will now achieve political advantage, at the cost of economic setback, if the euro collapses. Although the government insists both that it is still wedded to the success of the euro and that it will not be isolated in Europe now or in the future, the simple fact is that eurofailure will ensure that efforts to organise among the 26, rather than the full 27, will finish. The economic costs would be considerable — possibly

Peter Hoskin

The coalition’s latest anxiety attack

It is starting to feel like the build-up to the AV referendum again, if not worse. No longer the casual bonhomie of the coalition’s early days, but a great show of mutual distrust and loathing between the Lib Dems and Tories. There was Nick Clegg’s interview on the Marr Show earlier, of course, which James has already blogged about. There are rumours that Vince Cable is set to quit. And there is also Paddy Ashdown’s caustic article in the Observer, which he has followed by attacking, Major style, the Tory ‘bastards’ on Sky this morning. For their part, many of those ‘bastards’ are looking on at the Lib Dems’ pain

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Clegg blames the Tory Eurosceptics

Nick Clegg has just given a quite astonishing interview to Andrew Marr in which he accused David Cameron of being incapable of getting a good deal for Britain because of pressures from within the Conservative parliamentary party. When Marr asked him if things would have been different if Lib Dems had been in Brussels, Clegg said they would have been because he is ‘not under the same constraints from my parliamentary party.’ Clegg described Cameron as being trapped between the ‘intransigence’ of the French and Eurosceptics in the Conservative party. Intriguingly, the deputy Prime Minister blamed the French for there being no negotiation about the British asks. This suggests that

Saturday

Mats Persson

Ten myths about Cameron’s EU veto

The EU veto that Cameron pulled in the early hours of Thursday morning has been widely misunderstood on all sides. Here are the 10 most common myths: 1. Because of Cameron’s veto, Britain lost a seat at the negotiating table. Not true. The UK was never itself going to take part in the Merkozy pact (and potentially be subject to EU sanctions), and therefore not in the monthly, parallel EU meetings that will begin in January, either. Even if he had approved the Treaty changes, Cameron still would not have had a seat at the table. Wider political challenges aside, the veto didn’t change anything structurally in terms of UK

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The sort of influence we can live without

David Cameron’s decision, in the wee hours of Friday morning, to make clear that he would veto the proposed treaty change will have many far-reaching effects. One is that other European leaders know that Cameron is prepared to follow through on a threat to veto. As Charles Moore says in The Telegraph today, the dynamic that has existed throughout this country’s participation in the European project — that “Britain huffs and puffs, but always agrees in the end” — has now changed. This morning, those close to the Tory leadership were pointing out that a Cameron threat to, for example, veto the budget next year will be taken far more

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Britain and isolation

The word ‘isolation’ is used a lot in today’s newspapers, as if Cameron walking away from the ongoing EU implosion were a self-evident disaster. Pick up the Guardian and you see Britain cast as a leper, a status conferred on her thanks to a tragic miscalculation by a Prime Minister whose sole aim was to assuage his swivel-eyed Tory MPs and get back on Bill Cash’s Christmas card list. Orwell would have great fun with the language that accompanies the Euro project: trying to suck up to its tiny elite is seen as a country being outward looking. A PM more focused on the people who sent him to office is

Daniel Korski

What Cameron can do next

What now? That’s the question. This morning it looks not like 17 versus 10, but like 1 versus 26, which is a cold and lonely place for Britain to be. But it is also the right place to be. David Cameron asked for a little and got less. He had to act as he did and will reap the benefit electorally and among his MPs. Labour’s position is not just politically weak, but also unrealistic: it has been clear for weeks it was not possible to run a ‘periphery strategy’ as the 10 states outside the Euro have different incentives to Britain and different long-term aims. And the idea that

Friday

Fraser Nelson

A dozen questions for after the Brussels summit

Cameron will be depicted in tomorrow’s press as either a Tory Boudicca or an Essex Bulldog (© Tristram Hunt), depending on your point of view. I suspect the truth is somewhere in between. Cameron did not go in swinging a handbag, although it will suit No10 to make out that he did. But Labour’s caricature of him storming off and wasting the veto certainly doesn’t ring true to me. An EU27 deal was never likely, and EU17 deal always was. Cameron, on their account, just seems to be being blamed for what was going to happen all along. In any case, we are still trying to assemble the pieces of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron on top — for now

Looking at the British political scene today, David Cameron is in a very strong position. His own party has rarely been happier with him. His coalition partners, despite being the most pro-European party in British politics, are standing by his decision to use the veto. What Liberal Democrats keep stressing is that the British government was not actually asking for that much and that Sarkozy’s behaviour left Cameron with little option but to wield the veto.   Labour are in good spirits today. But they don’t have an answer to the question of what they would have done in the early hours of this morning. Instead, they are saying that

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s ‘No’ leaves Clegg in a tight spot

It’s days like this when we should remember that Britain is, officially, the most eurosceptic nation in the EU. Europe may not rank high on the average Brit’s list of policy priorities, but many will nonetheless cheer at the idea of us stepping aside from Merkel and Sarkozy’s bulldozing plan. Whether the PM swashbuckled or blundered into saying ‘No’, that ‘No’ is unlikely to harm the public’s perception of him — and will probably boost it. That’s what makes all this particularly difficult for Ed Miliband. Unlike some in his party, the Labour leader is not inclined to out-sceptic Cameron, so that leaves basically one alternative: to claim that the

Daniel Korski

What could Cameron have done differently?

It is hard not to see the results of last night’s European meeting as the first step towards a fundamentally different — and much looser — relationship between Britain and the EU. The UK, which for centuries has fought to keep any one power from dominating the continent, and for decades has sought to prevent a two-speed Europe from emerging, is now going to have to accept both. It also seems that it will have to protect itself from some form of fiscally-shaped missile against the City.   The irony is that the PM did not apparently push for any UK-only protection of the City, but a broader protocol such

Peter Hoskin

The Merkozy Plan fails to convince

A day or so ago, the markets were rising in anticipation of what might be achieved at this Brussels summit. But this morning they’re mostly either unmoved, or — as in the case of borrowing costs in Italy and Spain — shifting in unpropitious directions. No-one, it seems, has been won over by yet another night of political bargaineering in Brussels. And understandably so. None of the measures mooted this morning are particularly concrete; all have a sogginess about them. More cash will be transferred to the European Financial Stability Facility, but it’s still some distance short of the €1 trillion that was, ahem, ‘announced’ at the end of October.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A defining moment

David Cameron’s use of the veto in the early hours of this morning changes the British political landscape. The first thing to stress is that if the euro collapses it will not be because of the British veto. The deal agreed between the 17 eurozone countries and six of those nations who still want to join it does not address the single currency’s fundamental problems.   What is, perhaps, most intriguing about what happened in the early hours of this morning is that Sarkozy and Merkel chose to put Cameron in this position. In truth, Cameron was not asking for that much. But Sarkozy and Merkel were not prepared to

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Cameron says ‘No’

It looks like Britain could be heading for renegotiation with the EU sooner rather than later. The UK, Hungary, Czechs and Swedes last night stayed out of a 27-member EU Treaty. ‘I don’t want to put it in front of my parliament,’ said Cameron. But in an historic move, the deal is going ahead anyway, with 23 members: the Eurozone, plus the six states who want to join. ‘We will achieve the new fiscal union,’ said Angela Merkel. Nicholas Sarkozy is upbeat saying it has been an ‘historic summit’ which will change the EU ‘radically’.  If so, then Owen Paterson is right in his interview with James Forsyth in the