Why David Cameron needs some German stamping and Gallic scowling
David Cameron insisted at the end of this summit on ex-Soviet bloc countries that he hadn’t “usurped” the proceedings … but neither did he give them his undivided attention.
David Cameron used this first post-election meeting with the EU to start the process of renegotiation. He warned again of “loads of noises,” various countries saying this or that is “impossible”, but you should wait for the final result, a bit like the general election.
That general election probably didn’t give the result a lot of leaders here quietly hoped for. David Cameron said: “I wasn’t met by a wall of love.” Many EU partners will be irritated that a full agenda has “Britain” added to it. President Hollande said this wasn’t the place or the time to discuss David Cameron’s concerns. But that, on the fringes of this summit, is what David Cameron did.
If they really wanted to punish David Cameron they could sign up to everything very quickly. That would risk casting any agreement as too easy and worthless. Much of the pricing of this negotiation will come from the very “noises” David Cameron dismissed today.
He, like Jim Callaghan in 1974, laying out the Labour government’s negotiation plans in Luxembourg, needs a bit of German stamping and Gallic scowling to help British voters through the thicket of protocols and to work out whether anything worthwhile has changed.
I asked the prime minister at his press conference (he’s still working off a bug, coughing and spluttering a bit) how he could square his desire to discriminate against EU workers in the UK benefits system with the EU leaders’ categorical position that such a thing breaks all rules.
For eastern European EU member countries, it’s insulting, suggesting their people aren’t worth what UK people are worth. As they absorb the details of what the government proposes to do reducing entitlements to their citizens, their faces pale.
If it was an across the board approach, requiring new contributory rules for all, UK and EU, that would be different. Some of the very backbenchers he wants to please with EU change might like a tightening up of the welfare system requiring four years of work before you get a tax credit. But it would look like he’d ducked the point he insists is so important.
He’s gone home now, snuffling and coughing … the prospect of a perfect, restorative and relaxing bank holiday weekend ahead, topped off with a bank holiday Monday visit to Chequers from Jean-Claude Juncker.
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