Is David Cameron having a staged row with Donald Tusk?

Donald Tusk’s letter to European Council members highlights the choice that David Cameron faces in his renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with Europe. Either he insists that EU leaders meet his demand of a four year block on benefits for new migrants, thereby delaying the process, or he drops the demand in order to get consensus on the matter and then faces the prospect of selling a ‘new relationship’ that doesn’t look all that new and doesn’t contain a key change that most voters will understand.

Tusk’s letter goes through Cameron’s four demands for reform. On the first three, he is reasonably positive, suggesting room for changes in the arrangements for non-euro members, ‘strong determination to promote’ competitiveness in the EU, and sympathy for demands on the role of national parliaments and ‘various paths of integration for different countries’. But then on the ‘fourth basket on social benefits and the free movement of persons’, he says ‘there is presently no consensus on the request that people coming to Britain from the EU must live there and contribute for four years before they qualify for in-work benefits or social housing’. He adds:

‘This is certainly an issue where we need to hear more from the British Prime Minister and an open debate among ourselves before proceeding further.’

And later in the letter he argues that ‘all member states and the institutions must show readiness for compromise for this process to succeed’. Though he says ‘we must find a way to answer the British concerns as quickly as possible’, he must surely mean Britain as well as the other leaders who must respond to the renegotiation demands.

If EU leaders do reach a consensus on the benefit demands, then Cameron has had his row that suggests he’s had to fight for changes. This is what the campaigns to leave the EU are claiming this afternoon: that the whole disagreement is just a staged row. But if they do not, then the Prime Minister will need to work out a way of selling his deal to the British public as something that really does change things.