Disappointing deal: David Cameron (seen here with Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker) failed to deliver on his Bloomberg speech (© Yves Herman / AP/Press Association Images)


I’m a reformer. I’m in politics to change things for the better rather than accept a status quo which suits the establishment.

This Government is a reforming administration. The Prime Minister is personally leading work to integrate excluded minorities into our national life and promoting important reforms to social work, prisons and mental health. The Chancellor’s reforms have helped incentivise growth and supported job creation, and are helping the poorest through the introduction of a national living wage.

But, despite the Prime Minister’s best efforts, there’s one area where we have failed to bring reform. The European Union.

The scale of the problem with the EU was powerfully laid out by the Prime Minister in his Bloomberg Speech three years ago. It’s worth quoting from at length to appreciate the force and urgency — as well as the clarity — of his critique:

“Taken as a whole, Europe’s share of world output is projected to fall by almost a third in the next two decades. This is the competitiveness challenge — and much of our weakness in meeting it is self-inflicted.

“Complex rules restricting our labour markets are not some naturally occurring phenomenon. Just as excessive regulation is not some external plague that’s been visited on our businesses.

“These problems have been around too long. And the progress in dealing with them, far too slow.

“As Chancellor Merkel has said — if Europe today accounts for just over 7 per cent of the world’s population, produces around 25 per cent of global GDP and has to finance 50 per cent of global social spending, then it’s obvious that it will have to work very hard to maintain its prosperity and way of life.

“The biggest danger to the European Union comes not from those who advocate change, but from those who denounce new thinking as heresy. In its long history Europe has experience of heretics who turned out to have a point.”

David Cameron’s words were heart-felt and impassioned. He pressed for reasonable reforms. But Europe didn’t change.

We must be clear. The Prime Minister’s deal does nothing to change the way the EU works, it doesn’t shift its direction of travel and it does nothing to address its enormous economic problems.