Labour MEPs: The coalition fiction exposed

By Glenis Willmott MEP

When David Cameron stood up in the Commons to lecture Ed Miliband about Labour MEPs’ support for a whopping 5.9% EU budget increase, the government backbenchers loved it.

The only problem: it wasn’t true. In fact Labour MEPs had voted against. It was Labour MEPs who were tabling amendments to try to slash over €1bn in wasteful agricultural subsidies.

The coalition spin machine has tried to find one technicality or another through which they could argue that Cameron was right all along, but it’s good to see that Cathy Newman on Channel Four News has drawn the right conclusions: the coalition claims are fiction.

Like all Tory leaders before him, Cameron is struggling to keep his eurosceptic backbenches on side and he clearly thought a budget row would deflect their attentions. But it’s the British interest that loses out.

While the coalition has been whipping up a storm of headlines in the UK about his tough budget stance, it is clear that he has failed to persuade enough other EU leaders of his case.

That matters not just about the 2011 budget, but also because there are bigger battles ahead, with negotiations about to begin on EU spending plans right through until 2020.

Cameron is trying his hardest to appear Thatcheresque. While I don’t have much positive to say about Britain’s first female Prime Minister, I doubt she’d have allowed herself to be caught out quite in the way Cameron has been this week.