Cameron under fire over attitude to EU crisis

Group Political Editor

Wednesday 31 August 2011

DAVID Cameron has been accused of abdicating European leadership to the Germans and French.

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Brian Currie Political Editor

Former Scottish Secretary Helen Liddell said he and Foreign Secretary William Hague had a “languid” approach to events in Europe and their attitude to the EU economic crisis had been a “lesson in how to turn a drama into a crisis”.

Baroness Liddell also warned left-wing leaders to “wise up” because they had become set in their ways.She said it was a measure of Britain’s weakness in Europe that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were “in the driving seat”.“The EU is our main trading partner; if eurozone countries stumble, we fall as well,” she said.Baroness Liddell, who was addressing a meeting of the Labour Movement for Europe in Edinburgh, said at the height of the banking crisis former Prime Minister Gordon Brown brokered a strong international response but now “we are not even on the phone, never mind at the table”.Baroness Liddell added: “The idea that yet another EU Committee, as proposed by President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel, will give a shot of Valium to fevered speculators in sovereign debt misses the point.“Markets will calm in an atmosphere of command and resolve; in the absence of that kind of leadership, we see ratings agencies, not elected leaders, determining the borrowing capabilities of countries and affecting the economic well-being of their citizens.“We are told the panacea for ailing EU economies is austerity, yet without growth not only do we consign our economies to a spiral of decline, we limit the life chances of EU citizens, especially the young, and give ourselves a legacy of unemployment and underactivity.”Baroness Liddell said the rout of left-wing parties in Europe in recent times showed their ideology had to be challenged. She said: “Restrictive practices, outdated labour law, protectionism, these are the policy tools of our fathers and grandfathers, not the way to craft a socially just Europe for the future.”

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Cameron under fire over attitude to EU crisis

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