I wonder what the average viewer will have concluded today about the EU bill. Will they only have taken in George Osbornes claim to have halved the bill? Or will they take in that it was a dodgy claim that didnt quite stack up? I imagine most people wont have bothered to persist with the Treasury twitter account (as I did - see below) until they admitted the bill remains £1.7 million and the rebate is applied at the regular formula. And if they did they may not know whether to believe the claim that the rebate wasnt something the UK could count on. So the Conservatives may well find out it was worth sending George Osborne out to the cameras long enough to say halved but not long enough for the journalists there to work out the truth. If it was deliberate it was pretty cynical politics. If they genuinely think they have halved the bill, rather than just delaying it and moving the rebate from afterwards to before then that is almost as worrying. Just for clarity this is my understanding of whats happened : the bill will now only have to be paid by late next year, with no interest. This is a good thing. However the bill hasnt been halved. It is just that the rebate Britain gets on all contributions to the EU is being calculated in advance and deducted. That brings the total down to circa £850 million to pay. Which is undeniably half of £1.7 billion. But the bill hasnt been halved. If it had, and we applied the rebate to that wed be paying under £500 million. The Treasury claims the rebate was a win in the negotiation and in doubt initially, but various Europeans - and even the odd British Tory like Dan Hannan - have said this is not true and we would always have had it, as we do on all our contributions to the EU. So it appears we will pay exactly what we always would have paid once rebate factored in, but a bit later.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Nov 2014 00:30:08 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015