The angry student in me, the anti-United States of Europe part, is impressed with last week’s rejection by David Cameron of amendments to the EU Treaty that would move us towards tighter fiscal union. It had to be Britain, didn’t it, with a history steeped in sovereignty, colonialism and that first-to-the-pole attitude. It is hard not to admire Cameron’s decision; on the face of it he is putting the interests of his people first, refusing to be swayed by the collective criticisms of the world’s most powerful people. UK citizens appear to agree with him. The first poll conducted since the Brussels summit shows that 62 per cent of British people agreed with the Prime Minister’s stance, with just 19 per cent against. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2072616/David-Cameron-got-right-Most-voters-agree-PM-vetoing-EU-treaty-changes.html#ixzz1gKJijL76)
This public support is questionable given that Mr. Cameron rejected the treaty change in the interests of Britain’s financial services industry. He held that the pact lacked the safeguards to protect the City of London against future regulations that might not be in its best interests. This includes the financial transaction tax that I discussed in a previous post, a tax that George Osborne has been publicly and repeatedly critical of. Yet the latest Eurobarometer poll evidenced that two thirds of all British people surveyed were in support of the introduction of such a tax. UK citizens have consistently expressed a strong level of support for tighter regulation of the banking industry. Perhaps their support for the Prime Minister’s EU treaty veto is down to a lack of awareness about the reasons behind it. Or perhaps the British people have simply had enough of EU policy and continued integration, regardless of the actual reasons given for Cameron’s decision.
