Cameron: I speak for disillusioned European voters

David Cameron is today pleading with European leaders to drop their support for Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission. In an article published in a series of newspapers across Europe, the Prime Minister argues that the EU needs ‘bold leadership – people ready to heed voters’ concerns and to confront the challenges Europe faces’. While claiming that his critique of the way spitzenkandidaten are chosen is ‘not an attack on Mr Juncker, an experienced European politician’, his article is quite clear that Juncker does not meet the job description as Cameron sees it.

Cameron wants to set himself up as one of the few European leaders who is listening to the people of Europe after the elections last month. He writes that voters ‘sent a clear message’, that they are ‘disillusioned’ and ‘are demanding change so it focuses on what they care about: growth and jobs’.