Where next for dented David Cameron?
As far as anyone in Whitehall can work out, no British prime minister has ever missed a Commonwealth heads of government meeting and David Cameron desperately doesn’t want to be the first to let Her Majesty down at this one. The PM has already dumped chunks of his travel diary for this week – Japan, New Zealand – to attend a stand-off with his parliamentary party and a Brussels gathering on Wednesday.
But that mini euro pre-summit at around 6pm tomorrow might drag on. It’s scheduled, when last I checked, for only one hour…hard to get all 27 EU leaders to sit down in that time, let alone say anything constructive.
This “Happy Hour” summit though will be preceded by an afternoon of bi-laterals and arm-twisting in which the PM will be hoping something can be achieved. The eurozone 17 then have their own crunch meeting. But if things are looking shaky, if the deal is still elusive, timings can shift. Is it really wise to leave Brussels when the destiny of the euro is being determined?
While the PM wrestles with all that, MPs are wondering where last night’s rebellion leaves David Cameron at home. One senior Lib Dem I spoke to said “good for us – he needs us more than ever.” Not that the Lib Dem MP thought that his party would be helping David Cameron with any repatriation of powers from Brussels any time soon. Read Alex Barker in the Financial Times and you get the impression Germany will do whatever it takes to make sure the UK doesn’t get an opportunity to turn a mini treaty change on fiscal union into an opportunity for repatriation of powers.
A whip said he thought there were five Tory MPs who consciously abstained on top of the 81 (including tellers) who voted against the government whip. Michael Gove had an uncomfortable interview on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme this morning when he was repeatedly unable to give any comfort to rebel backbenchers wanting to know when they get their Eurosceptic meat.
Another problem, which Michael Gove not surprisingly dismissed, is the atmospherics that contributed to last night’s rebellion. The education secretary said the vote was all about Europe and all about principle. I spoke to plenty of MPs who rebelled who said it was, for them, actually about personnel management, aloofness, a sense that David Cameron was just in politics for his own aggrandisement and that they were treated like irrelevant oiks who fancied biting back.
And how do you manage this level of disgruntlement? One whip said to me today: “I’ve got no f***ing sweeties to hand out.” The best account you can read on what he means is here – former MP Paul Goodman has “done the maths” about Tory male MPs’ promotion prospects given there’s a coalition, an aversion to reshuffle too much and a wish to get more women into prominent government posts. Yesterday’s rebellion tells you how many Tory MPs have already “done the maths” for themselves.
There are 15 comments on this post
Cameron showed total lack of judgement (again) on making it a 3 line whip. He could have left it as a free vote and still got the same result (i.e. NO to referendum). Instead he decided to make a power play of it and lost it disastrously.
And at the same time raised many questions about the nature of our democracy. I voted for my MP to represent me (or act as my delegate). I did not elect him to just do as he was told by Cameron. I did not vote for Cameron and Cameron’s opinions may differ from my own. So my MP is there to act on my behalf so when Cameron threatens my MP with “your career will suffer”, etc. it makes a complete farce of our democracy. It shows Cameron has no respect for the democratic process; instead preferring a dictatorial style based of privilege.
Yet again our PM’s judgement has shown sadly lacking. when will we get one decent politicians to vote for?
Unfortunately, for me, Cameron is my local MP. Even so, I did not vote for him, he does not represent my views in parliament or Europe. He does not even hale from my constituency, having been parachuted in when the last Tory MP defected to the Labour party.
We are aware that Europe is a bad egg, and we, the public, know that we will lose all autonomy if we enter into the single currency. Already, we have lost sovereign statutes and the legal rights we, the public, have been entitled to for countless centuries are being eroded and rewritten to alienate us from decent representation in the courts and in parliament.
Cameron has shown his hand to the voting public, what are we to do now?
Dented? Nice try!
Gary,
Watching the Tories rip themselves to pieces is only marginally less funny than watching the Blair-Brown punch up. It is diverting if nothing else.
And, being serious for a moment, it IS nothing else. It might cause a few bowel movements for congenital idiots like Gove but in the long run it will peter out like all Tory “revolts.” The Tories don’t have the moral courage to stand on anything vaguely representing a principle. Nothing but reactionary noise makers the lot of them.
Meanwhile the international money men will carry on ruining peoples’ lives and siphoning off the wealth of nations. But you can bet your last Euro the Tories won’t attack THEM. They’ll be too busy blaming “the nanny state,” whatever that is.
The day the Tories stand for anything other than greed and selfishness is the day hell freezes over.
Dave should skip Brussels and join the Queen down under. That kind of glossy PR trip is what he is good at. He’s rubbish at politics.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the referendum vote, it was politically naive to impose a three-line whip as soon as he knew a large number of MPs were going to ignore it.
Even if the antis had won the vote – most unlikely given labour and lib dem positions – Cameron could easily have kicked any referendum so far into the long grass not even a bloodhound could have found it again.
The most significant event of the week was Sarkozy’s blast at Cameron. It could well signal a trend of European leaders deciding that the UK can’t have it all ways – forever sniping but still wanting to do the majority of its trade with the EU.
If more EU leaders jump on that bandwagon, Cameron’s place in history will be as the PM who lost any influence in Europe as well as the man who wrecked the economy because he was too stubborn to consider a plan B.
But he will look ever so nice standing next to the Queen while saying jolly things about the Commonwealth and how important it is to Britain (shortly to be Britain-lite and Scotland).
If being in the EU is about ‘access to markets’, consider this…..
By 2050, the EU’s population will represent only 5% of the world’s people. But the Commonwealth countries will contain 30%.
Despite current disparity of wealth, that puts a somewhat different flavour on it. Those old imperial links could still pay off, big time.
It’s called thinking ahead.
Nice stuff! Agree with every word.
Ah Mudplugger, but, of that 5% in Europe, how many of them will be living in England?
Possibly 95% or 50% if we actually tighten the border controls. Another Tory broken promise.
Some Thoughts on the Last Two Blogs
Inevitably in any organisation there seem to those who do not pull their weight.
1]Europe is a very large organisation.
2]It is an ideological union as well as an economic one.
3]The problem seems to be there are those who for a variety of reasons are not pulling their weight.Perhaps they entered for what they thought they were going to get out of it.
All the economies should aim to meet the membership criteria, if they cannot then there are problems for the majority.
Are Greece, Italy, Spain Portugal and Ireland going to be able to realistically solve their problems and meet the required membership standards?
If not then sticking plaster solutions will not work and the problems will reappear.
Perhaps there are other members whose economies may flounder in the next few years.What is being done to ensure that membership criteria is on going strategy for all members. In other words what is being done to promote economic stability amongst member states?
This is particularly difficult with the competition from emerging markets when cheap goods flood the market.
Those who flounder need to be forced to take action early…
You are absolutely right to question whether Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland can actually solve their internal issues – I think we all know the answer is NO – because this time they won’t get away with lying about it.
The panic sticking-plaster is merely trying to buy time, at huge distributed cost, and it can’t ever work.
Because the fundamentals of their economies are so massively different from Germany at the other end of the scale, the gloriously foolhardy experiment of the single currency cannot succeed without complete absorption of all the economies into one fiscal/social/political unit – and the Germans will never accept that.
As that popular German joke goes today “An Irishman, a Greek, a Spaniard, a Portugese and an Italian went into a bar and all had a drink. Who paid ? We did”.
continuing:
the catastrophic financial crises that are affecting the world
Even before I voted for David Cameron I knew that he would have trouble with the right wing in his party and the passing of Fox made it come true. Now the rebells are calling David everything Fox actualy is. With the right wingers on top of the country the Conservatives would not win one election and I’m glad there is a coalition with the Liberals that can support David aqainst the “blood dogs” in his party.
The problem with this coalition is that is the wrong way round. The Lib Dems should have formed an acting opposition party coalition with the Labour party. That way they would have had better ability to control what the government were able to do and not do. All they are able to do at the moment is take backhanders and hope for the best.
missing words
therefore avoiding. If not then membership should be curtailed.
Another thought, perhaps a two tier Euro. In other words those who do not meet the economic criteria should have the value of their euros devalued. In other words one good Euro and another Euro with a different value. Far fetched I do not know Iam not an economist
That would never work, look at how the £ is doing. That is the same thing. All the Euro is doing is dragging down the financial status of all the other currencies.