WILL Friday’s “full English breakfast” in Brussels be to David Cameron’s taste or will he turn his nose up at the euro cuisine?
The sharp end of all the Prime Minister’s months and months of continental schmoozing has been about limiting the “pull factor” to Britain.
Immigration was at the top of the agenda in the General Election and the refugee crisis has concentrated political minds even more strongly.
Figures out this week showed the number of non-UK EU nationals working in Britain rose to two million. Only around six per cent claim benefits, so it is questionable whether any of the reforms Mr Cameron is battling for will have any significant impact on the Poles, Bulgarians and Lithuanians wanting to come to the UK.
Moreover, the reforms the PM is seeking, certainly in terms of the so-called emergency brake, will only apply to new migrants not those already here.
While the principle of paying child benefit and child tax credits to an estimated 34,000 children who live in another EU country might raise hackles, the £30 million cost is, in the great realm of things, peanuts and might, one could suggest, pale against the overall picture of whether Britain should stay in or get out of the Euro club.
The last-minute wrangling in Brussels is over how long the emergency brake will be engaged for – the PM wants four years, others want two – and whether or not such concessions should only apply to the UK or to other member states.
Yet amid all the diplomatic manoeuvring, one has to wonder whether the Great British voters are taking any notice.
The sense many political-watchers have is that the underwhelmed public hasn't fully engaged yet in the great EU debate and may not do so until referendum day is all but upon us; the Scottish independence campaign it ain’t.
And, despite the great expenditure of Mr Cameron’s nervous energy, most souls will make their minds up not on the issue of migrants and welfare but on economic self-interest and a gut instinct about whether or not in this volatile and unpredictable world the UK is better off working in concert with our European allies, despite the EU’s institutional imperfections, or would be more prosperous going it alone.
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