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Friday 29 October 2010

£450m pennies dropping?

Yesterday Melancthon over on the Centre Right section of Conservativehome admitted:

"...it appears that when Labour said our Eurosceptic promises were all hot air, they were right; that when Heseltine said that in government every Conservative Prime Minister is Europhile, he was right; that when UKIP said Conservatives were not to be trusted on Europe, they were right; that when I and others said that the Conservative Party had changed, and that Cameron and Hague were genuinely convicted Eurosceptics who understood what must be done and would not let us down, we were wrong."

This was before David Cameron tried to present an additional contribution of £450m to Europe as a victory on the basis they'd asked for twice that.  He'd previously called for a freeze but had quietly ditched that. 

UK fiscal policy is that the time for stimulus spending by government is over and that cuts are the policy for the next four years.  He has now agreed that the EU budget is an exception to that rule.  This retreat will also do little to curtail the European Commission plans for further growth in the budget during the next major funding round.

In an interesting coincidence this amount is about £50m more than was cut from the NI capital budget for the same period. This has been defended on the basis that there was no more money available and such cuts had to be made in the national interests etc.  Yet within 9 days of the Spending Review being released Cameron's decision has shown both statements to be false.

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