Victorious PM paints himself as Camileo the EU heretic

In his victory address after the successful EU Budget deal this afternoon, David Cameron sought to paint himself once again as a Galileo-style EU heretic who spoke truth to power. This was all about what Cameron himself had achieved: his press conference statement was full of first person references to what he had ‘slashed’ and ‘achieved’. At one point he even said ‘at last someone has come along’ to sort the EU’s ‘credit card’, again clearly referring to himself.

This echoes the Prime Minister’s Europe speech last month where he talked about Europe’s ‘experience of heretics who turned out to have a point’. Today he was Camileo, the heretic who did have a point and won the argument. He was keen to underline that his negotiating skills meant Britain was not, as Labour likes to say, isolated in Europe, saying:

‘It also shows that working with allies, it is possible to take real steps towards reform in the European Union.