EU summit veto recriminations mount within coalition

Recriminations broke out in Whitehall over Britain’s isolation in Europe as it emerged that the Foreign Office felt excluded from the No 10 negotiating strategy and that senior Lib Dems claimed David Cameron went into last week’s talks with “no intelligence, no friends and no flexibility”.

David Cameron and Nick Clegg, openly at odds over the way in which Britain was left in a minority of one at last week’s European summit, have met twice in private to resolve their differences.

But Clegg refused to sit alongside Cameron as he made his statement to MPs on the outcome of the summit, saying he feared his presence would prove a distraction in the wake of the well-advertised differences between the two men. Labour called his stay-away “spineless”.

Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat cabinet sources described Cameron’s negotiating strategy as “unbelievably cackhanded”, one adding: “It is just beginning to dawn on Cameron and George Osborne just what a big mistake this is proving to be. They have tried to bounce us and there is going to be a price to be paid.”

In his first intervention in Britain on the crisis, the energy secretary, Chris Huhne, laid bare his exasperation at the way in which Britain may be excluded from key future meetings in Europe, telling MPs: “There is an old adage in Brussels: ‘If you are not in the room, you are on the menu’.” Liberal Democrats said they would be raising the issue, and the way in which future European issues are handled within the coalition, at Tuesday’s cabinet meeting.

Senior Liberal Democrats claimed British business was already beating a path to their door to express their concern at the implications of the UK’s isolation for access to their key export market. Another source said this outcome was “a gift for Alex Salmond”, the Scottish first minister, because Cameron had taken unilateral decisions with huge implications for Scotland.

It was also suggested that although the British demands to their EU partners on concessions over the future handling of financial services were agreed in the coalition’s Europe committee, key background explanatory papers were not sent out to UK allies, and the circumstances of a veto was not mentioned.

Commission officials, meanwhile, claimed that Kim Darroch, the UK permanent representative to the EU, was not given details of the UK negotiating strategy until 48 hours before the summit, prompting him to complain to his political masters that he had not been given time to build the necessary diplomatic alliances.

Liberal Democrat sources accepted that Clegg had been given full details of the negotiating strategy, but no one had war-gamed what would happen if Cameron started to find himself in a minority of one in the talks that went through Thursday night.

In a bid to cool the atmosphere between the coalition partners, Conservative sources said they would not at this stage seek to block the 26 other EU countries using EU institutions, including commission buildings and the European court of justice, to oversee the stricter euro-surveillance regime.

Cameron had suggested any use of EU institutions by the 26 EU countries would be in breach of the treaty at his initial press conference. Clegg said in his talks with Cameron that Britain urgently needed to build diplomatic bridges with other EU countries and could not afford to be seen to be hindering Europe’s efforts to stabilise the euro.

He said on Sunday that it would be ludicrous for the UK to insist that the other 26 countries set up separate bodies for their future meetings on the euro, adding that Britain needed a foot in the door to protect its national interest.

In his statement, Cameron insisted he “genuinely looked to reach an agreement” at the EU summit but vetoed treaty change because it was not in the national interest. He told MPs he negotiated in “good faith” and his demands were “modest, reasonable and relevant”. He said he used the veto as he did not secure “sufficient safeguards” on financial regulation.

Explaining his decision to veto the 27 EU members agreeing a treaty on euro-surveillance, Cameron said it was “not an easy thing to do but it was the right thing to do”. He said he was faced with the “choice of a treaty without proper safeguards or no treaty and the right answer was no treaty”. Insisting he would never go ahead with “a comfortable and cosy consensus” inside Europe, he claimed the Liberal Democrats “did agree with the negotiating strategy we pursued and I can be very clear that I came to this house I said what I was going to do and I then did what I said”.

Conservative Eurosceptics, under instruction from the whips, eschewed triumphalism and held back from waving their order papers or condemning their European partners. Only two rightwing backbenchers were openly rude about the Liberal Democrats; Philip Davies describing them as “lickspittles”.

Cameron will be delighted that he has seen off the prospect of a Conservative revolt on Europe for the forseeable future, and has also won widespread popular backing for his use of the veto. The pressure to hold a referendum has receded, as have calls for a fundamental renegotiation of the UK relationship with the EU. He was also relieved to hear support for his stance from the Europhile justice secretary, Lord Clarke, who blamed Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, for refusing to negotiate. But Clegg stuck to his guns saying: “The prime minister and I do not agree on the outcome of this summit. Last week I made it very clear that isolation in Europe when we are one against 26 is potentially a bad thing for jobs, for growth and for millions of jobs in this country. That is why we build bridges and make sure the British voice is heard loud and clear in Europe.

But Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said Cameron had gained nothing from the negotiations “It is not a veto when something goes ahead without you, that’s called losing,” he said. “He has come back with a bad deal for Britain,” he told MPs. “Far from protecting our interests, he has left us without a voice.”