Conservative Eurosceptics turn fire on UK negotiator
Eurosceptic backbencher Julian Lewis questions Sir Jon Cunliffe's likely effectiveness in negotiating for Britain in Europe
Eurosceptic Conservative MPs are making a concerted effort to remove the newly appointed civil servant responsible for UK negotiations in Europe.
In the next phase of a campaign to push Britain toward a referendum on membership of the European Union, backbencher Julian Lewis took the unusual step of questioning Sir Jon Cunliffe's likely effectiveness in negotiating for Britain. Speaking on the BBC Politics Show, he said: "At the moment, we have negotiating for us in Europe Jon Cunliffe as the most senior civil servant and he was the man who signed us up to the EU-wide bailout.
"So it's difficult to see how we're going to get anything except the managing of ministers' expectations, splitting the difference.
"If you want serious repatriation of powers, you need someone who has the confidence of parliament in there negotiating, really trying to bring things back."
Cunliffe worked at the Treasury before becoming senior UK negotiator at organisations such as the G20. David Cameron recently appointed him as Britain's senior diplomatic representative in Brussels.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, another Eurosceptic Tory, Douglas Carswell, also appeared to target Cunliffe without naming him. "Britain's diplomatic service and in particular, its Brussels arm, UKRep is resolutely integrationist.
"Replacing the mandarins who have spent years negotiating their way into this mess would show that David Cameron is serious about getting us out of it.
"A new head of UKRep, appointed directly by the prime minister and accountable to parliament rather than the Whitehall machine, would have a better appreciation of the national interest. They would also be under pressure to do what UKR! ep has n ever managed, and bring powers home."
In a sign of the worsening relations between Tory backbenchers and their Liberal Democrat coalition partners over Europe, Lewis described the Lib Dems as "the real extremists" and accused some Tories of not standing up to them.
"The reality is that we've got a situation where the Conservative party is being run almost as if it's an exclusive coterie, and it's an exclusive coterie on the left of centre of the Conservative spectrum, allied with the Liberal Democrats who are, I think, much more pleasant to associate with from their point of view," he said.
In an article in the Observer, the Lib Dem leader and deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said it would be economic suicide if UK sought to repatriate powers. He won the support of the Swedish finance minister, Anders Borg, supposedly a close ally of Cameron, who warned that an attempt to repatriate powers would leave Britain increasingly isolated.
Clegg also warned Germany against seeking wide treaty changes to make it easier to impose fiscal discipline on eurozone countries. He said such a move would "open a Pandora's box, leaving us paralysed by ideological battles, institutional navel-gazing and special demands from every member state".
Cameron has tried to placate his party by promising to exploit Britain's veto over any EU treaty changes sought by Germany, and to gain exemptions from European employment law.
On Saturday, he admitted that he wanted more rebalancing of powers than his coalition partners, but insisted he would seize any opportunity to open talks with his European partners. He said he had already ordered officials to draw up a checklist of powers that Britain wanted to claw back.
He added: "What we don't know is whether a German proposal for treaty change will bear fruit, whether it will get through. We don't know how big that treaty change will be, ho! w extens ive it might be, so we don't quite know what our opportunities will be.
"But I'm very clear, just as I got the bailout power because that was good for Britain, in our national interest, I'm looking for other ways to further our national interest in Europe."
Clegg may yet go along with limited calls for the rebalancing of UK powers over issues such as employment law.
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