Cameron, Brussels and Leave camps’ friction
David Cameron was running late and looking a bit hassled for his meetings at the European Parliament in Brussels this morning.
One of those he was hoping to win over, the leader of the Liberal grouping, former Belgian PM and now MEP, Guy Verhofstadt, insisted: “I think (David Cameron) came out of the meeting with more confidence than before.”
There was always a chance that other EU countries might try to get a bit of the action when they saw what Britain was getting. There’s clearly been a bit of that with some the grander, long-standing members sniffing around the child benefit changes Britain is seeking and wondering if they also can get reduced benefit rates for EU workers in their countries.
The Czech government is amongst those making very clear today that there is absolutely no chance of the PM getting a child benefit cut for EU workers whose children live over the Channel applied retrospectively. The new planned arrangements, linking payments to the welfare system in the country where the children are living, will only apply to new arrivals.
It’s not clear that Britain intends to press for welfare changes to be enshrined in a treaty to put them above legal challenge. The challenges of getting treaty change might outweigh the benefits, it’s thought.
There will be some “square bracket” issues to be resolved by the leaders on the night, including the question of how long the emergency brake on welfare is allowed to continue for.
One EU diplomat said the whole deal now looks “do-able and likely” and he would be “surprised if it didn’t happen” this week. One Whitehall source said the possibilities of not getting a deal were now quite low.
The only unqualified good news for David Cameron is still being provided by his opponents, the two groups vying for the crown of official campaign. One of them, the umbrella group “GO” which is linked to “Leave.eu”, has announced that it is to apply for the official status which confers, amongst other things, the right to spend up to £7m on the campaign (the cap for whichever Leave campaign outfit loses this battle will be £700,000).
Steve Baker, a Tory MP backing the rival VoteLeave campaign, said marshalling Euro-sceptics was harder than herding cats, he said he did have worries that Leave.eu could lose a referendum because they didn’t understand the need to go for swing voters and pandered too much to core support.
For good measure, the pro-withdrawal DUP has also piled in on “GO” as organisation that has wrongly claimed its support and has been “masquerading” as a street campaign.
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