An embattled David Cameron refuses to pay

House Magazine Article by Mo Hasan (October 31st 2014): David Cameron refuses to pay £1.7bn EU bill by 1 December deadline

An embattled David Cameron came to the House of Commons on Monday to reassure his party, and the country that Britain wouldn’t pay “anything like” Brussels’ €2bn demand. Like an unhappy diner refusing to pay his restaurant bill, he thundered: “We will be challenging this in every way possible. We want to check how the statistics were arrived at and the methodology that was used; we will crawl through this in exhaustive detail.”

During his statement, Cameron repeatedly banged his first on the despatch box, and appeared to lose his temper after Ed Miliband accused him of being “asleep at the wheel”. The Prime Minister looked somewhat alone as Labour’s cheers and boos met with little opposition from the silent and sombre Coalition benches. Cameron’s jokes fell flat not even his praise for the Chancellor managed to break self-imposed silence of his party.

Former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell offered the PM a lifeline by quoting a poll showing support for continued EU membership had risen to a 23-year high, suggesting his should help in combating Ukip, alongside “anyone else who wants to bring Britain out unilaterally”.

But then a devastating intervention from Ken Clarke detonated on the backbenches. “May I sympathise with the Prime Minister on being taken by surprise on a subject that everybody in the Foreign Office and the Treasury must have known was coming along for the past five months.” Clarke said with mock concern.

Cameron sheepishly conceded that “of course these changes happen every year – they are expected every year and discussed every year – but what has never happened before is a change on this scale, and no one was expecting that”.

Labour’s frontbench were rowdy. Even Mr Speaker said both sides were “in a very excitable state”. Miliband from a sedentary position, pointed at individual Cabinet members, demanding to know which one of them would end up paying the bill. These schoolboy antics were more Ed Balls than even Balls himself could muster. But the Labour leader failed to capitalise on this PR disaster for a Prime Minister desperately fighting off Ukip in his own Rochester backyard. Bored with barracking he scoffed what appeared to be very large mints. Miliband resembled a squirrel as his cheeks ballooned while Cameron struggled with a barrage of questions on EU membership.

And as for Ukip their sole MP Douglas Carswell decided to ponce on Cameron online instead of in the Chamber. He tweeted: “Classic Dave PM sounding tough but so far not actually ruling out paying £1.7bn. After December. After all the bluster.”