Cameron's EU-Turn

Europe just never brings good news for the Tories, and many of their grass-roots members will be as unhappy as Tim Montgomerie is over on Conservative Home. Last week the government was aiming to keep the EU's budget at exactly the same level in 2011: a zero per cent increase. This week, David Cameron announced that he has 'succeeded spectacularly' by preventing a 6 per cent increase. Instead, he's got agreement from eleven states to support a 2.9 per cent increase. 

That's a definite U-turn. It's not that 2.9 per cent is good or bad (which I'll discuss later), it's just that you can't say you've 'succeeded spectacularly' when you've changed your position as obviously as he has. It's awful politics. His narrative is shot to pieces. Indeed, so obvious is this that I'm genuinely amazed that the PM has used such strong language. Because he knows that there is no group that will accept this decision. 

So Labour will attack him for his U-turn - which is an easy story to sell to the press because 2.9 is so obviously not zero let alone the 25 per cent cuts our domestic budget is facing. Which is why Yvette Cooper has pointed out that Labour made it clear at the election they would not support a rise and said that the PM was 'grandstanding' over a 'complete failure'. And Tory Euro-sceptics will complain that he abandoned them and was weak because he promised a zero per cent rise last week. So we heard Norman Tebbit saying that anything other then zero per cent was a 'Vichy-style surrender'. 

Even if it was a negotiating tactic - the EU wants 6 per cent, we want zero per cent, lets meet in the middle at 2.9 per cent - the fact that Cameron publicly went for zero per cent when 2.9 per cent was already on the table was a tactical error. Because that 2.9 per cent rise is the same 2.9 per cent rise that was agreed months ago by a larger number of EU states. And this group includes Germany and France, whose leaders carry a lot more weight in Europe than Cameron does, which makes it hard for him to claim that this is his success. Even the supposed panacea to the right, Cameron's claim that from 2012 onwards the EU's budget will be linked to the budget's of member states that are planning austerity measures, looks weak. Why 2012? Why not now? And how will that work when states have very different budgets and benefit from EU spending in different ways?

As for whether or not 2.9 per cent is a good deal, it both is and isn't. Because in so far as the EU wanted a 6 per cent rise and it does need a rise if it is to fulfil its ambitions and keep up its development then yes, 2.9 per cent is a good deal for Britain. But in so far as the fact that the ambitions the EU has and the goals it sets are totally inappropriate and lacking in democratic legitimacy from the British people, it is obviously not a good deal. 

But in reality, Cameron is in a coalition with a Liberal Democrat party that is pretty pro-European. He is not from the right-wing of his party and is, at heart, a moderniser and pragmatist. It is possible he moved from zero per cent because he had to give concessions to the Lib Dems, but it's unlikely because the Lib Dems are facing a local election nightmare and more money for the EU isn't really going to help them very much. 

Frankly I think the coalition would be happy if the EU would just keep quiet for the next five years so they won't have to deal with it. Yet if Cameron hadn't made such a simple political error in driving for a zero per cent rise he could never get then things would be looking a lot better for the PM right now.