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Following his ConHome piece, David Davis warns that he and other Tory MPs would vote against further IMF €urozone funding

By Joseph Willits 
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DavisredwoodDavid Davis told Andrew Neil on the Sunday Politics earlier today that he would vote against any measures to give more money to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to assist with the Eurozone crisis. The former Tory leadership contender said there are many MPs "who are pretty critical of supporting the Euro with British taxpayers money", and would happily rebel against any decision by the Government to bail out the Euro.

After Davis' comments today, there is evidence of growing discontent among senior Tory party figures, who are warning against further IMF funding. Although John Redwood was not as explicit, in a blog post yesterday he said it was not the role of the IMF to bail out the Euro. Davis' appearance on the Sunday Politics follows on from an article published on ConservativeHome this morning, where he urged the Government to "stop pretending that preserving the Euro in its current form is in our national interest."

Davis questioned Nick Clegg's comments on the Andrew Marr show.  The Deputy Prime Minister had said "we must always be strong supporters of the IMF. We will always make our fair contribution".  Davis responded:

"You’ve got to ask yourself why the Americans, why Canada, why Japan are all antagonistic towards this proposal."

The IMF's purpose "to look after poor countries in difficulty" had changed, he said, and its new focus was "to prop up some of the richest countries in the world":

"What they are doing is to continually bail out but actually not allow the one thing which will allow Greece and Portugal - and for that matter Ireland, Spain, Italy - to recover, which is devaluation which requires leaving the Euro."

Davis also warned that the Eurozone would face the prospect of a "decade of zombie economies ... that have just got no way forward other than to cut back on public services and public spending." Measures which have been designed to keep countries such as Greece and Portugal within the Euro were failing, and had the potential to cause "a bigger catastrophe, a bigger crisis", he said.

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