David MilibandMember of Parliament for South Shields

Transcript from PoliticsHome

David discusses the recent EU summit on Monday’s radio programmes. You can listen to the Today Progamme interview here:

David Miliband described last week’s EU summit veto as “an Anthony Eden moment” for the Prime Minister.

“Remember, 55 years ago, 56 years ago, Anthony Eden walked away from the founding of the European Union and we paid the price for 0 years. This has been an Anthony Eden moment for David Cameron and I think that if you look back to what the Prime Minister was warning of just two months ago, namely the danger of a caucus of 17 countries bossing the rest of the European Union, he’s engineered a situation where it’s 26 countries together and Britain on its own without a say for the first time since we joined the European Union.”

He claimed Mr Cameron’s refusal to sign the treaty had achieved nothing for the UK.

“This is the first veto in history not to stop something. The plans are going right ahead, it was a phantom veto against a phantom threat, David Cameron didn’t actually stop anything because the other 26 are going on and, of course, the provisions of the treaty would not have weakened our rights and freedoms one iota. I’ve listened to a few of the ministerial interviews over the weekend. Not a single minister in a single interview has pointed to a single clause in this treaty that would have weakened our rights and freedoms under the, for example, financial transaction tax, which you’ve discussed many times. That is subject ot a veto, that veto remains whether or not we sign this treaty and I think the question that the Prime Minister has to come to the House of Commons and explain today is, what was the dire, mortal threat that he has avoided, because not a single minister, including himself has been able to point to it. “

Breakfast, BBC Radio 5 Live, 8.10

Mr Miliband said that there was always the opportunity to veto a financial transaction tax.

“The truth is that we already have a guarantee on the financial transaction tax, because we have a veto like every other country. And what the Prime Minister has done is he’s opted out of all the discussions. And my argument is that it’s self-defeating for the City of London as well. Because what we’re going to find is that 26 countries are going to have a series of meetings where they define a set of things amongst themselves and they end up coming to the meeting at which Britain attends and it’ll all have been cooked up.”

On the importance of the City, he said that it was an important part to consider that it contributed but that it shouldn’t be overestimaed.

“The City is about 8% of our economy, and the City of London is about one-third of that, because of course there are important financial centres in Leeds and Edinburgh. So it’s significant, but it’s smaller than manufacturing, which is about 13/14%.

“It’s an important global financial centre; it’s a very important part in our balanced economy. If unbalanced, it can go wrong. You’re right to say that it was too big a part of our tax take. It was 8% of our total economy but £1 in £8 of our tax take. I think the right approach is to say, yes, it’s an important asset for Britain, yes it should be defended, yes it’s a global financial centre but we don’t want it taking over the British economy.”

He said that it was critical that the eurozone was saved.

“This debate will be reduced to a footnote in history if the measures taken don’t save the euro. They’ve gone part of the way. I would have liked them to have gone far further in terms of taking joint liability for the future of the members of the euro, so that they were insuring each other.

“I’m also very concerned that simply the application of austerity, if you like German-style spending rules, is not enough to bring growth to the European Union. And we should have learnt by now, never mind from the 1930s but from the last couple of years: if you strangle your economy from growing, there’s no way that no way you can sort out your financial problems. “

He talked of how the Prime Minister had “mortgaged” Britain’s possible prosperity.

“It’s not just our economic interests that have been mortgaged by this decision. Our economic interests have been mortgaged because the only people who are celebrating are inward-investment managers in the Netherlands or Scandanavia. But our political and foreign policy interests have been mortgaged as well. Because people waking up in Washington or Moscow or Beijing this morning are going to be looking at a map of Europe and saying, if we want to understand who are the power brokers in Europe, there’s one country we know who is not going to be making the decisions, and that’s Britain. And that’s very dangerous for us.”