Britain has called EU leaders "cowards" as former Luxembourg PM Jean-Claude Juncker was elected president of the European Commission (the Eurocrats elected him, that is, not the EU people).
EU leaders united against British PM David Cameron - including those who originally professed to be his allies, such as Merkel and the Swedish PM - to appoint Juncker, an EU federalist who Britain was against having the job.
Only one sided with the British PM - Hungarian PM Viktor Orban.
The Prime Minister was left isolated after all but one of his fellow EU leaders picked Mr Juncker at a summit in Brussels.
Mr Cameron had fought the appointment of Mr Juncker - a man who is in favour of a United States of Europe (which Britain is against) and who is against EU reform (which Britain is in favour). Cameron was outvoted 26 to 2 on Friday.
Cameron said that Britain may quit the EU if Juncker is appointed, and now that Juncker HAS been appointed it must surely mean that Britain's exit from the EU is now a big step closer.
Daniel Hannan, the Eurosceptic Conservative MEP for South East England, who was re-elected at the recent EU Elections, says that divorce from the out-of-touch EU is the only course left for Britain....
Divorce is now the only course left for Britain and the EU (but here is how we can make it amicable)
By
Daniel Hannan, Conservative Mep For South East England
29 June 2014
Daily Mail
At teatime on Friday, it became clear that Britain could no longer remain a member of the EU. Any hope that we might change its nature – make it looser, more flexible, more attuned to its nation states – was coldly extinguished. Knocking British objections aside, EU leaders entrusted the top slot to a man who has never hidden his support for a United States of Europe.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the former Luxembourg leader who has just been chosen to run the world’s most powerful bureaucracy, wants a common EU citizenship, with reciprocal voting rights at national elections.
He wants to merge the various foreign offices into a European diplomatic corps. He wants a pan-European minimum wage, a federal police force and army, and harmonised taxes.
Time to go: Ahead of the appointment, David Cameron told fellow heads of state that choosing Juncker would push Britain towards leaving the EU
He has – to his credit, I suppose – been open about all these things. And he has just been appointed, by 26 votes to two (Britain’s and Hungary’s) to Europe’s most important job.
As president of the European Commission, Juncker won’t just run the EU’s executive – its cabinet, so to speak. He will also have the right to initiate new laws.
It’s an extraordinary concentration of power.
Not bad for a man who was thrown out by his own voters in December and whom Brussels insiders describe as imperious, idle and overfond of a drink (he apparently likes cognac for breakfast).
No one can now credibly claim that Europe is turning away from integration. The middle way that many British people had hoped for – the idea we could remain involved but on better conditions – has been closed off.
The choice we face is between leaving the EU or becoming, over time, a province of a country called Europe.
Chin, chin buddy: German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker raise their glasses
Other prime ministers weren’t even pretending to respect our sensitivities. On his way into the summit, Finland’s new leader, a Euro-fanatical former MEP called Alexander Stubb, brusquely informed the British people that they had better ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ and realise how economically dependent they were on the EU.
Afterwards, Angela Merkel, who had supposedly given David Cameron private assurances about blocking Juncker’s candidature, told the press that as far as she was concerned, ever-closer union was an obligation for all 28 members – albeit one they might fulfil at different speeds.
Viviane Reding, Luxembourg’s veteran Commissioner (is there a more pointless country than Luxembourg?), was more succinct: ‘Game, set, match!’ she tweeted. So much for the ‘influence’ that our Sir Humphreys keep harping on about.
Out-of-touch: In telling the British to "wake up and smell the coffee", Finnish PM Alexander Stubb shows just how much the recent EU Election results - which saw a large rise in votes for anti-EU parties - mean nothing to him and his cronies
David Cameron had pleaded with his fellow heads of government to choose someone more palatable to public opinion. Juncker’s appointment, he told them, would push Britain towards leaving the EU.
Yet, in the event, his opposition served only to solidify support behind the abrasive Christian Democrat. A number of EU leaders who disliked Juncker felt obliged to back him rather than be seen to have given in to British pressure.
David Cameron ruefully told reporters afterwards that he wouldn’t publicly endorse any candidates for the other big jobs in case his support blighted their chances.
That’s the true measure of our ‘influence’ in Brussels: it’s not just empty, it’s negative.
Juncker’s appointment is especially bad news for our Foreign Office mandarins. Their strategy ever since Cameron announced the in/out referendum 18 months ago has been to make the minimum necessary changes to persuade the country to vote for continued membership.
These changes didn’t have to be substantive; they could be wholly presentational. After all, a similar tactic worked for Harold Wilson in our 1975 referendum which, though they were soon forgotten, had supposedly also been held on ‘improved terms’.
'Soz Dave': Merkel had supposedly given David Cameron private assurances about blocking Juncker's candidature - and then she helped to appoint him
In March, the PM set out his goals in a newspaper article. None of them would have fundamentally altered the terms of our relationship and, indeed, none of them would have required a new treaty – the original justification for delaying the referendum to 2017.
The talk we used to hear from the PM about taking back social and employment policy, about unilateral repatriation of power, had been dropped. No wonder Nick Clegg and Ken Clarke cheerfully endorsed all the proposed ‘reforms’, pointing out that they didn’t change anything.
That strategy has now been blown to sparks and cinders. The country won’t fall for cosmetic changes being presented as a grand new deal – not now we have seen where the rest of the EU wants to go.
A British Prime Minister who came back trumpeting some memorandum about ever-closer union not applying to Britain, or some agreement to limit benefits claims for migrants, would be laughed at.
The electorate would see perfectly clearly that we were still full members of the EU, subject to the Common Agricultural Policy, Fisheries Policy, the Common External Tariff, the European Arrest Warrant and all the rest.
What, then, are Cameron’s options? One is to stick to Plan A: to get whatever concessions he can, oversell them and rely on our aversion to change to win the referendum. That strategy looks a lot less attractive now: he would risk defeat and, with defeat, resignation.
A second is to campaign for a No vote in the referendum – to announce that he had given reform his best shot, had got nowhere, and could not now in conscience recommend remaining part of what the EU was turning into. He would almost certainly win such a referendum comfortably – indeed, he’d break all records for popularity – but he won’t do it, because he fears that an acrimonious break with the EU would be harmful.
That leaves option three. An amicable separation that would leave us in the free market but outside the political institutions.
Britain could angle for the sort of deal Switzerland has: that is, free movement of goods, services, labour and capital, but not much else.
Switzerland pays only a token contribution to the EU budget, does not recognise the primacy of EU law on its own territory and – critically – is free to negotiate trade deals with non-EU states such as China.
And you can’t help noticing that it’s doing rather well.
If Britain secured such a deal – and Eurocrats keep indicating that it’s on offer – it might save face all round to dress it up as some form of associate status or semi-detached membership.
Other European states, both within the EU and outside, might want something similar.
After all, with the partnership pacts signed with Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia on Friday, the only European country that doesn’t enjoy free trade with the EU is Belarus.
We could create a pan-continental market, stretching from Iceland to Georgia, with 40 or 45 members – some 20 or 25 of which might also choose to have a single currency and shared political institutions.
If we can’t negotiate such a deal from within, we should do so from outside, replacing our current membership with a Swiss-type free-trade agreement. The Swiss, after all, manage to sell four-and-a-half times as much per head to the EU as we do.
More to the point, the EU is declining as an export market: every continent is now experiencing growth except Europe.
There is a teeming world across the oceans, a world where we still have friends. Why stay in a declining customs union when the rest of the planet is waiting?
