Liberal Democrats are increasingly critical of Cameron's EU stance writes MARK HENNESSY,London Editor
DIVISIONS BETWEEN the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats over prime minister David Cameron’s decision to veto talks on a new EU-27 treaty have grown, with Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister Nick Clegg now warning that the United Kingdom could be “isolated and marginalised”.
Today, Mr Cameron is expected to be roundly cheered by the majority of Conservative MPs to the acute discomfort of the Liberal Democrats when he reports to the House of Commons on the Brussels talks.
Initially, Mr Clegg was supportive of Mr Cameron’s actions at the negotiations, even if he would have preferred an agreement involving all 27 states, but he has had to toughen his line as tempers within his own ranks have frayed.
“I am bitterly disappointed by the outcome of last week’s summit, precisely because I think there is now a real danger that over time the United Kingdom will be isolated and marginalised within the European Union,” said Mr Clegg.
However, he still accepts that Mr Cameron could not have signed up to the deal put on the table in the early hours of Friday morning, saying that the package put forward by Mr Cameron – which had been agreed by the Cabinet – sought “pretty reasonable safeguards” for the City of London.
“For one reason or another, there wasn’t even any negotiation about the menu of negotiating asks that we’ve made. There was no give-and-take at all, the whole thing became polarised,” said the deputy prime minister.
However, other Liberal Democrats were critical of Mr Cameron, while party officials used inflammatory language in their descriptions of the prime minister in briefings to the British press over the weekend.
Former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown, who often voices feelings shared by Mr Clegg, but which he cannot declare if the coalition is to survive, said Mr Cameron had “tipped 38 years of British foreign policy down the drain in a single night”.
“We have handed the referendum agenda to the eurosceptics. We have strengthened the arguments of those who would break the union. We have diminished ourselves in Washington,” he declared.
The Liberal Democrats will now insist that Mr Cameron moves to put the UK back centre-stage at the European Union – though the means by which he could do it, if he was so minded, are unclear. Eurosceptic Conservatives want him to go further in the opposite direction.
During a Cabinet meeting last Monday, the options for the talks were discussed. Liberal Democrat business secretary Vince Cable warned that the UK should not put everything behind protecting the City of London. However, the list of London’s demands for the Brussels meeting was approved in advance.
Last night, Mr Cable’s officials rejected as nonsense suggestions that he is about to quit.
Conservative MPs will today meet in the House of Commons to lay out an agenda, which is expected to detail powers it wants brought back from Brussels, along with demands for a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU.
Privately, however, some senior Conservatives dismiss fears of a coalition break-up, acknowledging that they must allow the Liberal Democrats to “vent off” about the EU talks outcome, along with offering some concessions on some domestic issues.
Despite the feelings among some in his own ranks, Mr Clegg accepts that Mr Cameron could not have accepted Friday’s deal, even if he questions the manner in which Mr Cameron handled the negotiations.
“He had intransigence on the one hand (from some EU states), and he was facing, clearly, intransigence in large parts of the Conservative party in Europe. He couldn’t come back to London empty-handed.
"I'll tell you why not, because self-evidently if he'd done so, he wouldn't have been able to get whatever had been agreed through the House of Commons, so what we would have had would have been a delayed crisis," he told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.
Mr Cameron will be reassured, however, by early polling results that show that his action has won broad support from UK voters, although the Liberal Democrats’ nerves could be tested if they perform as badly as is now expected in a London by-election later this week.
Meanwhile, the foreign secretary, William Hague, urged calm: “I think that on both extremes there is some exaggeration and there are, on the one hand, people who say this now leaves us isolated ...
“That is not the case and there are others who say it’s a fundamental change in the relationship.
“I don’t think that is the case either. We will be working with our European partners on all the normal range of issues, very largely in the normal way.”