Cameron’s EU stance undermines coalition outlook
The fallout from David Cameron’s à la carte EU membership speech is likely to divide the UK’s parliamentary voice in the crucial final round of CAP reform negotiations. The UK prime minister has done more than offend European political figures who might once, under other circumstances, have heard him out. He has effectively locked himself out of several processes at once and scored more than one own goal in domestic politics, into the bargain. This increases the opportunities to recruit MEP support for the crucial European Parliamentary vote on the CAP in March. As the head of a UK coalition government, Cameron has ridden roughshod over the Liberal Democrat (Lib Dem) parliamentarians who keep him in power. Deputy prime minister and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is both a former MEP and former European Commission civil servant: he also speaks Dutch, Spanish, French and German. Clegg was one of the first to criticise the prime minister’s bull-in-a-china-shop performance when one of Downing Street’s worst-kept secrets finally saw the light of day. He described Cameron’s notion […]
