Cameron on Cameron: why did he leave the EPP again?

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

Seeing as last night was my only night off this week, I decided to sort out my folders and documents, and catch up on a bit of reading with the football for background music.

And seeing as a night off doesn’t really exist, after flicking through the FT, I got to the last couple of chapters of my neglected copy of Dylans Jones’ Cameron on Cameron. As I flicked to the three month old dog-ear, this is the revealing passage I came to:

“How are your relations with Angela Merkel at the moment?
Very good. We’ve had several meetings recently, and it’s exciting that there are strong, centre-right leaders across Europe now – Sarkozy, Merkel – who are making the running on things like the environment and economic growth and some of the social policy areas we’ve talked about. We have our disagreements, but my approach is always to be as frank as possible, and not try and cover anything up, and I think as a result of that the relationship’s quite good. And we have set up some working groups between our parties on climate change, counter-terrorism and competetiveness, which will help strengthen our relationship further.”

You have to wonder why, if it was such a good mutually-productive relationship, Cameron would shun Merkel and the mainstream group the German Christian Democrats are part of to set up a new, irrelevant group elsewhere.

“Is Sarkozy someone you can work with?
Yes, he’s enormously likeable and enormously energetic. I saw him make his speech in the Houses of Parliament and he was gesticulating and purposeful and full of energy. He’s a remarkable figure.”

Not remarkable enough to stick with in the European Parliament, though.

“And policy-wise?
I think there are lots of good things about him. To have a French President who wants to integrate into NATO, who’s pro-American, who thinks that Iran is a problem rather than a country to do business with regardless, these are huge breakthroughs. But at the same time you have always got to respect the fact that there really are some genuine differences over our attitude towards EUropean defence, over our attitude towards the reform of the common agricultural policy. It’s great that he’s saying and doing some things that wew can really agree with, but there are still going to be areas of disagreement. And the proof of the pudding, as ever, will be in the final consumption.”

A musical difference. Sarkozy wants to immigrate with mainstream international partners, but Cameron’s few “genuine differences” are evidently irreconcilable, and it’s better to form a partnership with these guys.

“He’s great company, isn’t he?
He certainly is. A human dynamo, a source of constant and irrepressible energy. It’s sometimes a challenge to get a word in edgeways. But we’ve had a few meetings now and get on very well – he’s just a huge pleasure to deal with. A huge pleasure.”

So deal. Don’t marginalise Britain in a new group away from these dynamic European powerhouses.