David Cameron makes strong attack on EU's culture of hopelessness

In Brussels today David Cameron is billed to make a strong attack on the European Union's "culture of hopelessness" (Daily Mail).  His four priorities for EU policy are summarised in the box on the right (click on it to enlarge) and are on conservatives.com.  They neatly combine Euroscepticism with modernising messages on the environment and poverty.

It is no accident that Mr Cameron has chosen to make this Eurosceptic speech one day after his first anniversary as Tory leader.  The speech the day before the anniversary - on education - although it disappointed in media terms was, like this one, intended to reassure traditional Conservative voters that David Cameron shared a commitment to the same issues.

After promising a grittier Conservatism in year two of his leadership to BBC's Nick Robinson, the Conservative leader promised a 'change of gear' to Tory MPs at a special parliamentary gathering last night.

At a meeting with Conservative MEPs later today he is expected to say that he remains determined to lead them out of the EPP after the next European Parliamentary Elections.  He will encourage Timothy Kirkhope's team to accelerate efforts to build deeper links with the Czech ODS (our principal partners in that endeavour) and to develop a new agenda for Europe within the Movement for European Reform (the grouping intended to lay the groundwork for the new ODS-Tory grouping).  Eurosceptic MEPs complain that Timothy Kirkhope is doing little to prepare the ground for EPP exit.

Comments

[Michael McGowan]

All good points but how do you address them if there are major roadblocks to reform within the EU?

[Andrew Woodman]

Love to be a fly on the wall of that meeting. I can't see some of our more Europhile MEP's bing keen to build deeper links with the Czechs.

[ukfirst]

Has the EU ever responded to external pressure for reform? Has the EU ever given up powers once seized?

Sorry Dave, your credibility on this is approximately zero.

[Andrew Woodman]

It is like joining a golf club and saying you want to convert the greens to play tennis. The members will tell you to **** off. Can't help feeling the same will happen again.

I see the Guardian are spinning that you can't be green and Eurosceptic.

[Jorgen]

Nothing wrong with giving the EU a good laugh.
Number two and number four are anyway good suggestions, while number one and three are laughable.

[Sean Fear]

It would be better, IMO, if the EU just did less.

[Josh]

Some good points. I think we can begin to see the problem DC had when he inherited the Tory party. Any right wing policies will make him a pariah in the media.

The problem with the Conservative Party was not its policies. People frequently agreed with their policies when they came from an unknown source, but they recoiled when they learnt it was the Conservative party making them.

Hopefully, the Year of Wetness has softened the Tory image so that people won't be put off by image and reputation.

[Richard Weatherill]

This is encouraging - and even more so in the slightly fuller version provided by Iain Dale where, in each case, DC says "it's got to change". But how will any change be achieved when no-one seems the slightest bit bothered that (for example) the accounts haven't bee signed off for 11 years and when the CAP suits so many vested interests?

I wouldn't bet on seeing any significant change in my lifetime - unless the EU is broken up by either external events, internal unrest, or perhaps as a result of the Euro collapsing.

[Serf]

It would be better, IMO, if the EU just did less.

Like stop breathing?

[Sean Fear]

That sort of thing, Serf.

[gweirdo]

i think you should see the relvant post here

www.gweirdo.com

[Richard]

This is promising. Cameron should also call for the abolition of the common external tariff. In fact, he should call for the abolition of all EU regulations except those that remove trade barriers.

[michael mcgough]

It must be hard for him not to conclude that we'd be Better Off Out of the EU.

[Denis Cooper]

If such commonplace stuff is all that Cameron has to say about the EU, then it's pretty pathetic. He will need to do much better than just recycling this kind of old hat. What next - "In Europe, but not run by Europe"? Oh sorry, I forgot, we've just had that little gem from Hague.

[Mark Wadsworth]

I came up with a cunning plan to fund EU enlargement. Fact, when countries join, their property prices go up quite considerably. Fact, enlargement costs donor countries like UK, Netherlands a fortune. Fact, most of the money disappears or is wasted. So who benefits most? Landowners in new EU member states. I don't think that was the idea, was it?

So if each new nation pegged its pre-EU property prices as the baseline and charged landowners a percentage of the up lift (as a one off or an annual tax, see if I care) then that extra tax would mean that the landowner's windfall gain is shared fairly between landowners and the cost of infrastructure in the new Member state, at ZERO cost to the usual donor countries.

And as the people paying the land value tax are closer to the ground, as it were, they are much more likely to make sure that their governments actually spend it on roads, railways etc. Unless the landowners and kleptocrats are the same people anyway, in which case, who cares?

[Denis Cooper]

Maybe he'll slip in something about this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/07/weu07.xml

"Britain and Germany facing EU treaty clash"

"Germany yesterday unveiled a master plan for resurrecting the European Union constitution, setting the stage for a pitched political battle with Britain pushed firmly into the front lines."

Etc.

[TomTom]

So that's what they call 'Whistling in the Wind'

[michael mcgough]

He must be serious, there has been a flicker of movement on www.europeanreform.eu

[Elaib]

Talking to people who were a the meeting he said few of those things that were flagged up. No "culture of hopelessness" no going on about how the Tory MEPs were going to become an engine of change. And no row about EPP membership, despite the prescence of Helmer, Hannan etc. Indeed from what I understand the meeting was hijacked by the more pro-EPP members going on about how enormously influential they were.
"I got this rapporteurship because of our links with the EPP". "I served on that Committee because of my alliance with a big group".
One comment I heard was, "All you could see of Timothy was the soles of his feet", so sycophantic he was to Dave.

After an hour of this Cameron left fast and got out of the Parliament, having made it clear that he did not want any photographs in the Parliament.

My favourite snippet from the day was his press conference. In fact it was a brief meeting with a selected group of British hacks for 15 minutes in a hotel coffee shop by the Commission building. As one of them put it to me, "that'll be 3 questions, with no follow up - not sure if I can be bothered, I can always get the story from somebody else".

[Cllr Keith Standring]

'At a meeting with Conservative MEPs later today he is expected to say that he remains determined to lead them out of the EPP after the next European Parliamentary Elections.'

Having ratted on his promise to withdraw Conservative MEP's from the EPP '..in days, not weeks or months' I and countless others shall wait to see what he actually does.

Sadly, DC has caused many Conservative Party faithful to question whether or not they're in the right Party. This will have an effect on the forthcoming May 2007 local elections, and the subsequent General Election whenever that might be.

[TomTom]

This will have an effect on the forthcoming May 2007 local elections,

My abstention is in the bag

[George Hinton]

All anodyne subject matters, though any maention of CAP will have the French up and snarling.
Making an enemy of that arch corrupt deadbeat,Chirac, would do Dave's charisma a world of good.
I am saddened by the lack of attention to the EU that Dave has been paying. He has reneged on a promise regarding pulling our MEP's out of the EPP, albeit that it can be claimed that the decision is deferred but on a deadline. He has failed to realise the groundswell of public opinion that is anti-EU and all it stands for. The corruption and the idiotic legislation that results in CAP and the Fisheries Policy, the political interference in the working of the so-called independant ECB, the welter of legisaltion that is drowning business in red tape, the lack of clarity on parliamentary dealings, the use of guillitine tactics to limit debate on legislation.....the list oes on.
There is a real danger that Conservative support will drift to UKIP and this will defray any gains from the centre, undecided, that he might gain.

[Yet Another Anon]

The EU is doomed, it's top heavy with bureacracy, the Commission and the Council of Ministers are living in a dream world, it's time to wake up and get back up the rabbit hole.

[Londoner]

What Cameron is reported as having said is encouraging and all fully in the Eurosceptic (but better off in) tradition carved out since 1997. UKIP won't have anything to get their teeth into here.

[Bretters]

I hear from EU-Nihilist that dave disn't exactly address these priorities today after all. But in case he feels like doing so somewhere else, some other time, he might be interested in the opinion of a life long Tory who's finally decided that UKIP really are the last refuge of sanity in the political landscape.

http://bretters.blogspot.com/2006/12/lagneau-mort.html

[Patsy Sergeant]

George @ 11.12 - Has anybody ever done any research to see whether other Member States such as France actually abide by or enforce the 'idiotic legislation' of the EU in the same rigorous way that we do in the UK. I seem to remember reading some years ago that France at least had a much more laissez faire attitude to interminable regulations!

[PETER GREENHILL]

I simply cannot understand how it is that Cameron still believes that the EU can be a force for good at any time. For years I supported the European Movement seeing it as a potential force for good but with deeper insight into the history of this nightmare and the way in which it operates, I am totally convinced that what is being created ( and with our money I should add) is an overarching and controlling organisation which will dominate our lives and change the British way of life forever.
Wasn`t it Mr. Gorbachev who asked why the Western politicians were trying to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe - and let`s face it, he should know!

Since being dumped into the useless EU we have seen a welter of bureaucracy streaming down from the Brussels madhouse at a rate which would have been laughable if it wasn`t so true. We have seen our fishing industry wrecked and many other businesses destroyed mainly through the dollops of legislation and bureaucracy which the EU churns out by the hour.

Many of our UK MPs have`nt got a clue about the EU and one well-known MP allegedly signed the Mastricht Treaty without having read it!

We need to get out now and if cameron thinks for one minute that he will gain support for the Conservatives without taking a big stick to the EU he is sadly mistaken. I wonder if he is even aware of the number of senior local Conservative Party members voted UKIP at the last election. If he persists in sucking up to the EU he will parallel Noo Labour which leaves the rest of us to either vote for UKIP or - perish the thought - BNP.

Wakey wakey Cameron.