Ed Miliband's reply to PM's statement on Europe
Can I start by thanking the Prime Minister for his statement.
The reality is this.
He has given up our seat at the table
He has exposed not protected British business.
He has got a bad deal for Britain.
The Prime Minister told us his first priority at this summit was sorting out the Eurozone.
But the euro-crisis is not resolved.
No promise by the European Central Bank to be lender of last resort.
No plan for growth
Little progress on bank recapitalisation.
Mr Speaker, can he first tell what this failure means for our economy?
At the summit that was meant to solve these problems of course, he walked away from the table.
Let me turn to where that decision leaves Britain and each of the claims he has made.
Many people feared an outcome of 17 countries going it alone.
Few could have anticipated the diplomatic disaster of 26 going ahead and 1 country, Britain, being left behind.
The Prime Minister rests his whole case on the fact that 26 countries will not be able to use existing treaties or institutions.
But can he confirm that Article 273 of the European Treaty allows them to use the European Court of Justice?
And no doubt they will use the Commission’s services, and yes, even the buildings.
In case anyone had any doubt, it was confirmed by what the Deputy Prime Minister said yesterday.
“……it clearly would be ludicrous for the 26, which is pretty well the whole of the European union…to completely reinvent..a whole panoply of institutions.”
And the Prime Minister won’t even be sent the agenda for these meetings that start in January.
He will read about decisions affecting British business in the pages of the Financial Times.
He claims that he didn’t want to sign up the fiscal rules being imposed on euro-area countries.
But can he confirm that no one even proposed that these would have applied to Britain?
He claimed in his statement to have done what he did because this treaty posed a grave threat to our financial services industry.
But even today, he is unable to point to a single proposal in the proposed treaty which would have entailed the alleged destruction of the City of London?
What was the threat? Can he now tell us?
And in any case, there is nothing worse for protecting our interests, in financial services, than the outcome the Prime Minister ended up with.
Can he confirm that there is not one extra protection that he has secured for financial services?
He wanted a veto on financial services regulation—he didn’t get one
He wanted guarantees on the location of the European Banking Authority—he didn’t get them.
Far from protecting our interests, he has left us without a voice.
And the sensible members of his own party understand this as well as anyone.
What did Lord Heseltine say at the weekend “You can’t protect the interests of the city by floating off into the middle of the Atlantic”.
Quite right.
But we know, it’s no longer the Conservative Party of Lord Heseltine.
It’s the party of the Rt Hon Member of Stone and his friends, out on the television grinning like the Cheshire cat, saying this is exactly what he’s always wanted.
And what about the rest of British business, that the Prime Minister doesn’t seem to have been thinking about?
The danger for them too is that discussions about the single market they rely on now take place without us.
Only this Prime Minister could call that leadership
The Deputy Prime Minister clearly doesn’t agree.
He says this outcome leaves Britain “isolated and marginalised”.
Does the Prime Minister agree with that assessment?
Of course not.
How can the Prime Minister expect to persuade anybody else that this is a good outcome when he can’t persuade his deputy?
The Prime Minister claimed to have wielded a veto.
But a veto is supposed to stop something happening.
It’s not a veto when the thing you wanted to stop goes ahead without you.
That is called losing
It’s called being defeated
It’s called letting Britain down.
Next I want to ask about how we ended up with this outcome.
The proposals he tabled, when he tabled them, and his failure to even try and build alliances for them suggest someone who did not want a deal.
Can he confirm what he actually proposed was to unpick the existing rules of Lady Thatcher’s Single European Act?
Given that it was changing 25 years of the single market, why did he propose it in the final hours before the summit?
And where were his allies?
If he wanted a deal why did he fail to build alliances with the Swedes, the Dutch, the Poles, Britain’s traditional supporters?
If he really did want to protect the single market and financial services, why didn’t he seek guarantees that these issues would only be discussed with all 27 members in the room?
In any case he shouldn’t have walked away.
The Treaty will take months and months to negotiate.
He could have reserved his position, carried on fighting for the national interest, as other countries have done.
The real answer is this; he didn’t want a deal because he couldn’t deliver it through his party.
The Prime Minister responded to the biggest rebellion of his party on Europe in a generation by making the biggest mistake for Britain in Europe in a generation.
So this is a bad deal, which we ended up with for bad reasons.
And it will have long lasting consequences
It is a decision which means we are in the sidelines not just for one summit but for the years ahead.
The Prime Minister said in this House on the 24th October that what mattered:
“is not only access to the single market but the need to ensure we are sitting around the table... That is key to our national interest, and we must not lose that.”
Well congratulations Prime Minister that is exactly what you have done.
What no prime Minister has ever thought as wise.
To leave the room to others, to abandon our seat at the table.
The Prime Minister says he had no choice.
He did.
He could have stayed inside and fought his corner.
He should have stayed inside and fought his corner.
Faced with a choice between the national interest and his party interest, he has chosen the party interest.
We will rue the day this Prime Minister left Britain alone, without allies, without influence.
It is bad for business.
Bad for jobs.
And bad for Britain.
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