The Spectator

The EU has just called Cameron’s bluff – and won

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So in the end, David Cameron’s attempt to renegotiate Britain’s EU membership served to remind us of the case for leaving: the EU is designed in such a way that almost no sensible proposal can be passed. Its negotiations start after dinner, and are designed to drag on until 5am – a formula designed to stifle debate, and to wear people down. The Prime Minister was kept waiting until 10pm to be told that he had agreement on a deal – but one perforated by the bullet holes of other member states. The resulting deal is a woeful substitute for the fundamental reform that he rightly set out to achieve. They called his bluff, which is bad in itself. But worse, he has now been sent back to London to try to call the bluff of his country.

It is typical of the EU that the summit should have been obsessed with finer points of detail without anyone being able to address the bigger picture. We have had hours and hours of debate over how much child benefit should be paid to the family of a Polish parent working in Britain whose children remain back home. And even on this, Cameron was defeated: the final deal only allows him to index such payments living standards in the country where the child resides from 2020. A deadline which remind the British that Brussels controls such issues. Meanwhile, a more fundamental issue has not been addressed: that western Europe’s generous welfare policies are simply never going to be compatible with mass migration, whether from outside or inside the EU.

David Cameron’s original proposal – to ban immigrants from receiving benefits for four years – was reasonable, and would not have been a threat to Britain’s many immigrant workers because so few of them claim welfare.

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