Cameron “outwitted, outmanoeuvred and outvoted” – Miliband’s statement on Juncker appointment

“The Prime Minister failed over Mr Juncker. He was outwitted, outmanoeuvred and outvoted. Instead of building bridges in Europe he is burning them. This is a Prime Minister who cannot deliver for Britain.”

It’s tempting to say that Europe is the Tories’ Achilles’ heel, but that would be unfair. That would imply that the Greek hero would often talk about his weak heel and enjoyed wearing flip flops.

No, the Conservatives Party’s inexplicable obsession with Europe is worse than that: they consider their mortal foot to be their greatest armour. Yesterday’s statement from David Cameron on the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker was the best example of their delusion we have seen in a long time.

Plenty in the media have been pushing the absurd narrative that this is somehow a victory for the Prime Minister – or at the very least a noble defeat. It’s worth reviewing what truth there is in this.

In the House of Commons we had the sight of the supposed natural party of government, those who should have the best understanding of how to work the tricky levers of power, cheering an abject failure in diplomacy. Twenty seven Conservative MPs stood up to have it noted that they applauded Cameron for having devised a strategy that not only failed to achieve its supposed aim, but that he had designed to fail.

It was clear long ago that Juncker’s appointment was a forgone conclusion. Yet rather than engage, Cameron chose to continue publicly opposing, making a point of ‘standing up to the EU’, it in an attempt to cheer his backbenchers and stem the flow of voters he is haemorrhaging to UKIP. His near-solo anti-Juncker campaign was a short-term stunt for party unity and vote consolidation, made at the expense of a working relationship with many of Europe’s leaders.

Worse still, he may have misread the electoral advantage. The basis for the PM’s actions will surely have been the poll boost his party received after he wielded a “veto” in Europe two years ago. However, a belief that this situation will play out like that one ignores a vital fact: in the aftermath of the veto it wasn’t just the Tory support that rose – support for the EU did too. What this tells us is that people do not simply support any instance in which a British leader stands up to the EU, but that they like it when the UK has a voice and benefits from using it.

And in this circumstance, the UK comes out much, much worse.

So, as much as today’s paper’s would like us to believe that the sole Tory lead in yesterday’s Ashcroft poll is a “Juncker bounce”, I am afraid it is not.

But we were also treated to something much rarer and even more enjoyable than Tory Euro-induced hysteria – we got to see an excellent Miliband Commons performance.

Seemingly buoyed by the sight of an especially braying Tory mob, celebrating Britain’s diminished standing on the international stage, Miliband took apart Cameron’s tactics in an eight-minute attack that is well worth watching. We could sit around all day wondering why Ed can’t land blow after blow in the Chamber at PMQs every week, but the truth is he is simply not naturally effective in this kind of environment – so we should rather be grateful on the occasions he nails it. And yesterday, he did.

Indeed, Ed’s biggest problem he faced was not the noise from the benches opposite, but Speaker Bercow’s pleas for quiet interrupting the flow of his demolition job.

The deftest moment came when he laid the groundwork to return to this subject every time Europe is raised, by succinctly dismantling Cameron’s long term plan to reform the nature of the EU by 2017:

“If he couldn’t get four countries to support him over Mr Juncker,” the Labour leader said, “How on earth is he gonna get 27 countries to agree to a new treaty?”