Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments at they happen, including David Cameron’s speech setting out his EU negotiation demands, his letter to Donald Tusk with his proposals and the Commons statement about them * Cameron’s EU renegotiation speech - Snap verdict * Cameron’s speech and letter to Tusk - Summary * Commons statement on renegotiation - Summary * Government puts plans to relax Sunday trading laws on hold 4.39pm GMT Here’s ANGUS ROBERTSON, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, on the government’s decision to shelve the plans to liberalise the Sunday trading laws. (See 4.08pm.) I’m delighted; this is a U-turn by the government to a proposal which may well have been detrimental to workers both in Scotland and the rest of the UK. This is yet another example of the SNP operating as the effective opposition at Westminster; we’re very pleased that they’ve pulled their plans. I think it is possible to reach safeguards and guarantees to make sure that shop workers are not worse off. We are supporters of Sunday trading, we think Sunday trading is a good thing. But it shouldn’t happen on the back of often lower paid shop staff in Scotland and throughout the rest of the UK. 4.36pm GMT Here are four blogs on David Cameron’s speech worth reading. Having committed himself to a phoney renegotiation, [Cameron] played out the charade with brio, characterising Britain as a country of cool heads and controlled passions—“natural debunkers” as he only somewhat oddly put it—and himself as its epitome: a rational, moderate type with neither the federal zeal of Europe’s integrationist intellectuals nor the spittle-flecking fury of Britain’s most isolationist Europhobes. He tacitly conceded that he would back membership, come what may; setting out a list of demands variously symbolic and uncontentious and producing a fairly gutsy case for an In vote. Mr Cameron’s most troublesome ask, the four-year benefit freeze, he downgraded from a firm request to an indication of the sort of arrangement he would like to reach. The six-page letter to Mr Tusk, published shortly after the speech, added few details but for a list of bullet points concerning Britain’s role as a non euro-zone country in an EU dominated by that currency. These were essentially reactive, responding to recent continental attempts (all unsuccessful) to secure British contributions to the Greek bailout, force European clearing houses out of London and leave Britain vulnerable to strong-arming by the euro-zone on matters of financial regulation. We heard again today from David Cameron the argument that voting to stay in Europe is all about national security. One old Europe hand said: “They’re hoping Putin will win this for them.” George Osborne deployed the argument heavily in Berlin last week. And it sounds like the government has decided to layer another message on as well. When I was Europe Minister (2002-2005) the UK removed the reference to ‘ever closer union’ (ECU) as part of the negotiations over the then draft constitutional Treaty which was voted down by the French and Dutch. No-one noticed the change of language on ECU and no Tory MP thanked me at the time. The phrase which is in the preamble and has no legal effect has not been a cause of concern between 1957 until a year or two ago. It will easy to draft a declaration that in any future Treaty, the UK can have a protocol added to the treaty saying ECU does not apply. Continue reading...
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