Even as he goes head to head with our EU partners at a last-ditch summit in Brussels, a leaked discussion document shows four states are likely to stand against his feeble tweaks to the Union's ground rules. However thin, weak and watery Cameron's gruel may be, even this seems too much for our EU friends to swallow.
Our nearest neighbour France – with whom our relations since 1066 can best be described as fractious – is predictably the most vociferous and petulant in its opposition to Cameron's flimsy tinkering. Emulating De Gaulle's rejection of Britain's first fatal bid to join the Common Market in the early 1960s, President Francois Hollande has stamped his petit pied and cried "non!" to any idea that the slow-mo car crash that is the eurozone can be refashioned closer to Britain's desire.
France, of course, is notorious for only obeying the EU's edicts when it suits her, and the whole course of the community's history from its foundation has been a story of pandering to Paris's wants and needs – from the Common Agricultural Policy (aka a racket to protect French farmers) to giving France a ruinously expensive and quite unnecessary second seat of the European Parliament in Strasbourg (although the great Euro talking shop already had its home in Brussels).
Brussels is the de facto capital of the embryonic European superstate that is the ultimate destination of the EU gravy train. The city is also the actual capital of Belgium, the second country to squeal against the temerity of Dave's minuscule demands. Naturally this artificial state, cobbled together by the great powers in the 19th century and perennially divided between its French-speaking Walloon south and west and its Flemish-speaking north and east, shares France's objections to any "reforms" of the sclerotic institutions that have made Brussels such a prosperous city for the bloated bureaucrats who live and dine there.
Spain, which, like Britain, came late to the EU feast, when its rules and edifices were already set in stone, has suffered more economically from being locked into the coffin of the euro than any other EU state except Greece. With half its young people out of work and its most prosperous region, Catalonia, eager to break away, Spain is terrified of any relaxation in the suffocating financial regulation that has condemned the eurozone to stagnation. This it has added its voice to the chorus of disapproval.
Finally Hungary, a small east European state with a right-wing Government which is itself usually out of step with EU edicts on migration and national self-determination, objects to Cameron's plan to limit benefits paid to EU citizens working in Britain. This is hypocrisy on a scale of almost Hollandeian proportions. For no country has done more than Hungary in the face of the migrant tsunami over the past year to fence itself off and keep migrants out. For Budapest, the EU's cherished free movement of people applies to itself – but not to Britain.
What all four of these states have in common is a fear that if Britain succeeds in smashing or even loosening the shackles that bind it to the fast-decaying corpse of European union, that will set off a "contagion" of other states wanting to follow the same path. And as that would never do, they are seeking to further emasculate Cameron's eunuch negotiating stance by this meddling.
If the tiny timorous changes proposed by Cameron were serious reforms, rather than the charade of pretend demands that they evidently are, this chorus of disapproval from our European partners should set alarm bells ringing about the reality of our "influence" in Europe that the Remainians are always banging on about. For why on earth should we want to be members of a club that has no wish to listen to us?
To prevent further meddling and the indignity of willingly participating in Britain's own funeral, Mr Cameron has no need for futile haggling. He should pack his bags and go now.
Original Article
Source: telegraph.co.uk/
Author: Nigel Jones
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