Merkel’s counter-strike

“What we have today is a story based on speculation about what [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel might have said about something [British Prime Minster] David Cameron might say in the future,” said David Davis, a prominent Conservative member of parliament, in London on Sunday. So no big deal, then?

It’s a very big deal: Merkel is pulling the rug out from under Cameron. For all his tough talk about renegotiating the terms of Britain’s membership in the European Union, she is saying, he has no cards in his hand.

At the EU summit on 25 October, Cameron said that changing the existing rules that guarantee freedom of movement for workers within the EU would be “at the very heart of my renegotiation strategy for Europe.” No, said Angela Merkel, it won’t work: “We have the basic principle of free movement. We won’t meddle with that.”

In other words, if Cameron doesn’t like the membership rules, tough. He can hold a referendum if he wants, and leave the EU if he wins. But there’s no way he can get the other 27 members to change the basic rules of the organization just to solve his little political problem at home.

In fact, Merkel will even try to ensure that Cameron loses next year’s British election so that there is no referendum on Britain’s EU membership. Being an experienced politician, however, Merkel delivered that part of her message in a deniable way.

It was officials from Merkel’s own office and the German foreign ministry who briefed the news magazine Der Spiegel on her plans in that regard. They were not to be quoted by name – and it was left to the rest of us to figure out what her words would do to Cameron’s re-election chances.

Cameron has recently been talking about...

Continue reading on: