The Tories desperate attempt to rein in EU spending suffered an expensive financial and political defeat earlier this week following the decision by Europe’s finance ministers to impose, in the face of British objections, an extra £770 million in contributions which the UK Treasury must pay to Brussels this year.
Britain’s inability even to avoid paying the extra levy makes a mockery of Cameron’s claims that the government will renegotiate our relationship with the EU. If Britain cannot even avoid a “shake-down” at this stage, then what chance has it of negotiating anything of value in future?
This is a personal setback for David Cameron, desperate to be seen to be (successfully) fighting Britain’s corner in that most undemocratic of globalist institutions.
Media reports maintain that cash-strapped EU states must now find an additional £6.2 billion for the hopelessly inefficient Brussels budget – this being a 5.5% budgetary increase – at a time of alleged deep cuts to national public spending and EU-imposed austerity throughout the Euro-zone.
This move, needed, to meet a budget shortfall, will take the UK’s contributions to a staggering £14.7 billion this year – £4 billion more than even the profligate Tories sacred foreign aid budget.
Economist claim that this will increase the annual cost of the EU to average British households to £581.
Initially Britain, Holland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Austria opposed paying the increase which, worryingly, may be followed by further demands for contributions in the autumn.
Embarrassingly for Cameron the European Parliament insisted on the extra payment as the price for supporting a February agreement to cut 3.3% from EU budgets, a deal claimed as a victory by the Prime Minister.
One EU skeptic commented: “On the day Cameron is offering a meaningless promise of a referendum, he gets an iron-fisted rejection from Brussels. This is another huge defeat for him at EU level, and shows the possibility of EU reform is non-existent.”
What do we want: A referendum!
When do we want it? Now!
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Well of course this presents another huge embarrassment for Cameron & Co. This week we have enjoyed the spectacle of the parliamentary Tory Party running around like headless chickens, voting against their own Queen’s Speech, formulating Private Members Bills on an EU referendum etc. Cameron’s strategy of ‘negotiating a better deal’ with the EU is an utterly futile venture going absolutely nowhere. The whole raison detre’ of the EU is ‘ever closer union’ as enshrined in the treaties. The doctrine of the Acquis Communitaire is a one-way ratchet of acquiring powers away from nation states to EU institutions. That is NEVER going to change. But let us rejoice. Whilst the interim beneficiary will be UKIP, it all heralds a major schism on the political landscape, which will present new possibilities and opportunities for nationalism. I think we have reasons to feel optimistic in the medium to long term.
Cameron’s achievement is much like saying “It’s only going to cost you five quid for me to save you three quid!” What a waste of space that man is!
The politically crippled UK can’t sack Cameron (or, as the injured, sick and bedroom-tax pensioners call him, “Hangman Heydrich”) until the next election in 2015. Say, about 2 years. Just the INCREASE alone to our EU payments would then be over ONE AND A HALF BILLION POUNDS! (2 x £770 MILLION). repeat – that’s not what we are paying, that’s ONLY the INCREASE! Our entire costs of being in the EU would build ao many factories (plus management, anciliary services, increased suppliers etc. etc.) that unemployment would virtually become history. It would also repair the NHS (providing only indigenous British people were treated without charging, as it ought to be.) At least twice a day I think to myself in disgust: “What a way to run a country!
the above article and indeed comments are spot on. this is why I have been advocating a heavy emphasis on economic policy in our new british democratic party literature. only pressure groups never mention the money. serious political parties do.