Labour’s stance on the EU is not in the national interest

Last week, after Labour MPs voted with the hard right of the Tory Party to defeat the Government on its plans for EU Budget negotiations, the Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls described it as follows:

“It is not about party politics, it is about the national interest. Parliament has spoken and David Cameron has got to listen and deliver.”

By pulling the rug out from underneath the Government the Labour leadership has made Britain’s position at the November council meeting impossible. The Prime Minister will have to ask the 26 other member states for a reduction in the EU Budget, and once refused he will either have to exercise Britain’s veto or return to the UK and try to force the EU Budget through both Houses of Parliament. He will probably have to use Britain’s veto.

As I’m sure you will have already surmised, these are pretty obvious conclusions. They would have been immediately clear to those in the Labour Party who decided that we should vote with the Tory right for a real terms decrease.

Despite what Ed Balls said, under no circumstances are any of these outcomes in the national interest. In reality, Labour has squarely put it’s leadership’s interests before those of Britain.

We will not get a real terms decrease in the budget. To quote the Financial Times:

“Not only would Britain fail to get support for such a demand; its very pursuit would harm the national interest.”

We will have to use our veto or risk failing to ratify the budget. In either case, as many commentators have noted, the previous European budget rolls over, and the British taxpayer simply pays more.

When the Prime Minister is sitting at the table in Brussels he does not represent the Conservative Party. He represents the whole country and Labour should have supported the reasonable negotiating position he proposed. By all means act as a reasonable opposition by scrutinising and arguing over the Government’s position, but don’t leave the whole country in a weak international position purely for your own narrow interests

It doesn’t look good to the electorate, and it just is not in the interests of those MPs are elected to represent.

Joe Coney is Head of Campaigns at Nucleus (@eurorealist) a campaign for British leadership in Europe