Europe

Saturday

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

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Sarkozy’s Victory

This is, according to the Spitfire & Bullshit brigade, a great triumph for David Cameron and, more generally, for euroscepticism. If so, I’d hate to see what defeat looks like. What, precisely, has the Prime Minister vetoed? It seems to me that the Franco-German european mission remains alive and well and, if viewed in these terms, Britain has been defeated. That is, the price of a short-term tactical success may be a longer-term strategic defeat. Of course, the Prime Minister had to avoid a treaty that would, sure as eggs be eggs, be vetoed by the British people via a referendum. In that sense, he prevailed. But this is a

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

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Annals of French Diplomacy

This is scarcely the most important part of today’s EU shenanigans but, post DSK and all that, one must admire French diplomatic flair when it comes to this sort of thing: The French are very angry – one French diplomat says that Britain is acting “like a man who wants to go to a wife-swapping party without taking his own wife”. Correct or not, this is nicely put. One’s hard-pressed to imagine an FCO or State Department suit expressing his frustration in quite such colourful terms. The temptation to make sweeping nationalist generalisations on the back of an off-the-cuff remark such as this should, naturally, be resisted. [Thanks to LM]

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

Thursday

Jonathan Isaby

Forget the Brussels Summit — here’s how Cameron could challenge EU power at home

Much has already been written this week about the negotiating hand that David Cameron should be playing in Brussels over the next couple of days.   I am fervently of the view that there is indeed a whole raft of policy areas over which he should be seeking to reclaim powers from Brussels, and they are detailed in a new paper by Dr Lee Rotherham, Terms of Endearment, which was published earlier this week by the TaxPayers’ Alliance.   But forget the European Council for a moment. For it is worth highlighting the things that the British Government could do immediately and unilaterally, here at home, to challenge EU power

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron plans Friday night reception for select Tory MPs

In a sign that David Cameron does not expect the European Council to go late into Friday night, he has asked a group of Tory MPs to supper at Chequers on Friday evening. It is hard to imagine that a full deal between both the 17 and the 27 could be thrashed out in time for Cameron to return to England for supper. Tellingly, the invitations to this event went out just last week.   This supper is part of a continuing attempt by Cameron to reach out to the parliamentary party. Interestingly, the guest list is not comprised solely of loyalists. Andrew Rosindell, who was part of the 81

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Extended version: Our interview with Owen Paterson

As promised by Fraser earlier, here is an extended version of James’s interview with Owen Paterson that we posted yesterday: It is becoming increasingly clear what the Conservative party expects of its Prime Minister. If he is going to agree to 17 eurozone countries pushing ahead with the Franco-German plan for fiscal union, he needs to secure a new deal for Britain in exchange. Just what this new deal should look like is a matter of intense debate in Conservative circles. If France and Germany turn the eurozone into a ‘fiscal union’, what does that mean for Britain’s standing in the European Union? At the weekend, Iain Duncan Smith suggested that the nature of

Daniel Korski

Cameron’s Europlan comes together

The Tory party may not like it, but David Cameron is now finally following a sensible EU policy. As today’s summit in Brussels starts, the Prime Minister appears to have decided what really matters to the UK, and realised that he needs to play nice with the Germans and French. At the top of the PM’s priority list — a priority voiced by Michael Howard on the Today Programme earlier — is avoiding the collapse of the euro. The consequences of a collapse on Britain’s economy are incalculable, but everyone knows they would be profound. Second comes the protection of the City. A Euroland tax on financial transactions would damage

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Paterson pasted across the front pages

James Forsyth’s interview with Owen Paterson is on virtually every front page this morning, and deservedly. Boris, bless him, can make calculated explosions at times when it suits him. But Paterson is not one for pyrotechnics or mischief. His thoughtful interview with James shows how believes that the eurozone is about to become ‘another country’ — he used the phrase several times — and one that can dictate regulations on the rest of Europe due to Qualified Majority Voting. James is posting a longer version of this interview later today, and I’d urge CoffeeHousers to read it. His Euroscepticism is rooted in his business background and the urgency he feels

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Europe is the story again

Today was one of those days when we saw just how divisive the European issue can be to the Conservative party. The sight of Malcolm Rifkind and Nadine Dorries treating each other with barely disguised contempt on Newsnight was a sign of just how poisonous relations in the parliamentary party could become. Intriguingly, the Daily Mail reports in its first edition that ‘Even some of Mr Cameron’s closest Cabinet allies are understood to be shifting to a much more Eurosceptic position, with a five-strong group of ministers planning to visit the Prime Minister as early as today to urge him to toughen his stance.’ Cameron now finds himself trapped between

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Ed the arch-bungler lets Cameron off the ropes

Ed Miliband had an open goal today. And he whacked it straight over the bar. Cameron was in trouble from the start. Having placated the rebel wing of his party with vague talk about ‘repatriating powers’ he is now expected to deliver. But he can’t make specific demands without weakening his hand at the negotiations so he has to talk in generalities. The Labour leader spotted this weakness and tried to exploit it with one of his lethally brief questions. ‘What powers would the Prime Minister repatriate?’ Cameron gave several answers without addressing the issue. His aim in the negotiations, he said, was to resolve the eurozone crisis, ‘and that

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Difficult Choices Are Never Easy

So spake the Taioseach, a Mr Enda Kenny of County Mayo, on Sunday night. Difficult choices are never easy. There is something near-fabulous about the phrase. It has certainly prokoked Fintan O’Toole most severely. He’s in rasping form this week Savour the phrase. Hold it to the light. Swirl it round the glass. Stick your nose in deep and inhale the rich aromas of full-bodied absurdity. Get the pungent whiff of carmelised cliche and curdled smugness. Imagine the work that went into crafting it, the bleary-eyed, caffeine-soaked speechwriters in their lonely eyrie, in the early hours of Sunday morning, running through the variations: hard choices are seldom soft; nasty things