Very interesting news from Strasbourg this week where David Cameron's Euro-nightmare before Christmas just got worse!
Not only is his new political grouping in the EP skating on very thin ice, but on Monday Conservative MEPs presented Cameron with yet another European headache by electing the more Eurosceptic of the three candidates to lead their delegation in the European Parliament. Although I must stress that newly-elected Martin Callanan is not in the same league as his Tory colleagues Roger Helmer and Daniel Hannan, both of whom should really belong to UKIP. In fact, Martin works hard on many issues in the European Parliament's Environment committee and is currently the Rapporteur on a new proposal to limit the amount of CO2 emitted by vans across the whole EU, and has achieved much consensus on his approach. Nevertheless, I suspect he is not a fan of Cameron's about turn on Europe since his election and his failure to implement his opposition rhetoric.
But Cameron's main worry will be for his new ECR (European Conservatives and Reformist) Group in the European Parliament. This is the group that Nick Clegg criticised during one of the leadership debates in May telling the nation how Cameron's MEPs were allied with "nutters, anti-Semites, people who deny climate change exists and homophobes".
Up until now, many such comments had been directed at the ECR leader, Polish MEP Michal Kaminski. Well it now seems that even he finds his own Party (the Polish Law and Justice party) so disgusting that he has resigned stating it has become too right-wing and been taken over by extremists. The Law and Justice Party are the Tories' largest ally in the ECR Group so it will be interesting to follow developments and see whether Kaminski can retain his leadership of the ECR Group.
Not only is his new political grouping in the EP skating on very thin ice, but on Monday Conservative MEPs presented Cameron with yet another European headache by electing the more Eurosceptic of the three candidates to lead their delegation in the European Parliament. Although I must stress that newly-elected Martin Callanan is not in the same league as his Tory colleagues Roger Helmer and Daniel Hannan, both of whom should really belong to UKIP. In fact, Martin works hard on many issues in the European Parliament's Environment committee and is currently the Rapporteur on a new proposal to limit the amount of CO2 emitted by vans across the whole EU, and has achieved much consensus on his approach. Nevertheless, I suspect he is not a fan of Cameron's about turn on Europe since his election and his failure to implement his opposition rhetoric.
But Cameron's main worry will be for his new ECR (European Conservatives and Reformist) Group in the European Parliament. This is the group that Nick Clegg criticised during one of the leadership debates in May telling the nation how Cameron's MEPs were allied with "nutters, anti-Semites, people who deny climate change exists and homophobes".
Up until now, many such comments had been directed at the ECR leader, Polish MEP Michal Kaminski. Well it now seems that even he finds his own Party (the Polish Law and Justice party) so disgusting that he has resigned stating it has become too right-wing and been taken over by extremists. The Law and Justice Party are the Tories' largest ally in the ECR Group so it will be interesting to follow developments and see whether Kaminski can retain his leadership of the ECR Group.
No comments:
Post a Comment