Will Straw: A British-led ‘Grand Bargain’ could cut the EU budget by 25%

Will Straw is an Associate Director at IPPR and the founder of Left Foot Forward. His research interests include globalisation, Europe, climate change, energy and transport policy. Follow Will on Twitter.

The week started with an unusual outbreak of political consensus as Ed Balls and Douglas Alexander joined David Cameron in calling for cuts to the EU budget. Tomorrow, the debate moves to the floor of the House of Commons, as backbenchers have their say on the Prime Minister’s approach.

Both Labour and the Government are on solid ground. The Common Agriculture Policy is a distortive anachronism which hoovers up over 40 per cent of EU spending despite making up just 2 per cent of economic activity across the region. Structural payments are inefficient with Britain transferring cash to poor parts of Germany (and vice versa) alongside the more justifiable projects in the former Communist states of Eastern Europe.

Meanwhile, much EU administrative support is wasteful. Readers of this website will need no reminding that it costs European taxpayers £150m per year for MEPs to take their monthly sojourn from Brussels to Strasbourg. Worse, it generates almost 20,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

Despite the obvious case in favour, achieving budget reform is a tricky business. France is wedded to the CAP while many smaller countries like the European largesse from which they benefit. Neither Cameron’s approach nor the Balls/Alexander plan set out how to overcome these obstacles. Any veto will simply result in the 2013 budget being rolled over at greater expense to the UK.

Alex Salmond accused of telling "barefaced lies" on Europe as SNP looks likely to lose its majority

By Matthew Barrett
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Yesterday, two SNP MSPs resigned the party whip. John Finnie and Jean Urquhart, both representing the Highlands region, decided to leave the party because of Alex Salmond's successful, but relatively close, vote (426 to 332) at the SNP conference to reverse the SNP's long-standing opposition to NATO.

All of that sounds a bit disappointing for the First Minister - until you add the fact he was left with a majority in the Scottish Parliament of one. Now things are about to get worse for Mr Salmond: today's Daily Telegraph says a third MSP is likely to resign the SNP whip over the same issue. The Telegraph reports:

"When asked by the Daily Telegraph, John Wilson refused to confirm he would remain in the SNP in the wake of party members voting to drop its opposition to the nuclear alliance. He praised the “courageous” decision by fellow SNP backbenchers John Finnie and Jean Urquhart to quit the party yesterday and said he looked forward to working with them again in future."

Unlike the two who have already resigned, Mr Wilson was elected in 2007 rather than 2011. 

All of this is rendered a little less dramatic if the two - or three - newly independent MSPs reliably vote with the SNP on non-defence issues, and they have indicated that they will. Nevertheless, it does not look good for Mr Salmond to go from having a majority of nine in the Scottish Parliament to, effectively, running a minority government. But Mr Salmond has a second major headache: he has been accused of telling "barefaced lies" on Scotland's future relationship with Europe.