"Victory for David Cameron as EU budget is cut for first time in history"

By Paul Goodman
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The Daily Telegraph's headine as we go to print is: "Victory for David Cameron as EU budget is cut for first time in history."

The Guardian takes much the same view, but points out that "critics of Britain will say that Cameron has not achieved a budget of €886bn which was set by Britain in 2011".

My best guess is that many voters, while believing that every penny spent on the EU budget is a penny wasted, will take the Telegraph's headline point.

So it's a double dose of good news for the Prime Minister this morning - with the Lord Ashcroft poll report from Eastleigh.

Cameron is not exactly my flavour of the month.  But he will have a bounce in his step this weekend, and he should be congratulated for helping to point the budget in the right direction.

Unless, of course, the European Parliament vetoes the deal. "Martin Schulz, the speaker of the European Parliament, threatened...to veto any cuts in the size of the EU budget".

• The deal "could save the British taxpayer up to £500 million a year".

• The plan "would slash the EU's spending by £30 billion between 2014 and 2020 compared to current levels of spending".

• "Talks began acrimoniously on Thursday afternoon when President Hollande snubbed a meeting with Mr Cameron and the German Chancellor."

• "One EU diplomat complained that Van Rompuy had adopted crude tactics that saw him buy off individual member states with "gifts" while cutting EU-wide infrastructure projects such as the Connecting Europe initiative. "Growth has been the victim of the bazaar," the source said."