UK’s EU influence is draining away

David Cameron’s failure to act diplomatically beforehand, despite Nick Clegg’s behind the scenes work, meant when he needed friends, he had none.

This was partially a result of his decision two years ago to leave the mainstream European right wing grouping and set up an alternative European party with a motley assortment of right wing nutters, including Holocaust deniers.

As for the obscenity of his returning last Friday night and hosting a dinner at Chequers, presumably at taxpayers’ expense, at which he threw the red meat of his so-called veto to the slavering, sclerotic, union-jack waist-coated Europhobes, we know now to whose tune he dances: not that of the country at large, but to the casino part of the banking fraternity that caused all our current economic woes, and to his right wing red-necks in the Conservative Party.

Cameron claimed to be acting in the interests of the UK’s financial industry: what he has done is to lock the UK out of any future negotiations on regulations of that industry.

What he has singularly failed to recognise is that a considerable part of the UK’s influence in the world, with countries like the US, China, India and other emerging economies, was simply because the UK was at the top table of Europe: such influence has been draining away rapidly since last Friday.

Stephen Hardy MBE

High Street, Robertsbridge