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Update: In the last few hours, there has been huge confusion and heated debate over whether the British bill has actually been halved. Click here for the verdict of Open Europe which concludes that ‘ Osborne [is] right on the amount but may be exaggerated the extent of the concession.’ A deal has been reached over the supplementary £1.7 billion bill that Britain was handed by the European Commission a fortnight ago. Britain will now pay no more than £850 million, a halving of the bill. George Osborne insisted that the Commission apply the ‘British advantage’ element of the rebate to the bill which led to this 50% reduction. Other EU

By rights, Jean-Claude Juncker should be in dire political trouble this morning, not lecturing Britain about paying an extra £1.7 billion to the European Commission. Documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists suggest that while Juncker was Prime Minister of Luxembourg, 548 comfort letters were issued to various international businesses about their tax arrangements. These letters allowed multinational companies to get away with paying minimal amounts of tax anywhere but Luxembourg despite the majority of their business being done elsewhere, the ICIJ alleges. The ICIJ claims that more than 340 companies secured secret tax deals with Luxembourg. The ICIJ alleges that the deal with FedEx left 99.75 per

We should all get used to reading stories about how Angela Merkel has warned David Cameron that if he persists with X, Y or Z she’ll no longer be able to support Britain staying in the EU. It is the nature of a negotiation that those involved in it will, at points, suggest that they will walk away if the other party continues to demand something. The skill is, obviously, to know whether the other person is bluffing or not. Now as Mats Persson points out, Merkel’s comments are not as definitive as they are being portrayed as in some places. But there is no getting round the fact that

The House of Commons is in a febrile, nervy mood this afternoon. No-one is quite happy with anyone else. David Cameron raised a cheer when he told MPs that he will not pay the €2bn bill apparently sprung on him by the European Commission, but he had very little to say when pressed by Labour on how this surprise was quite so surprising given Treasury ministers were mentioning it in letters months ago. Ken Clarke made backbenchers glower and opposition MPs howl with glee when he told the Chamber he sympathised with the Prime Minister for being surprised by something everyone in the Foreign Office and Treasury had known about

If the European Commission had come to Britain demanding another £90 million because this country’s economy had performed better than expected, it would have been a political headache for David Cameron. The money would have been handed over and Ukip would have slapped it on to its election leaflets. But the Commission’s demand for £1.7 billion extra from Britain is so outrageous that it provides Cameron with a political opportunity. He can refuse to pay and hold up all other European business until the demand is dropped, rallying the country to his side as Margaret Thatcher did over the British rebate. One Cabinet Minister says excitedly of the row with

A visibly riled David Cameron railed at the European Commission’s ‘completely unacceptable’ behaviour in demanding another £1.7 billion from Britain by the 1st of December. He warned that he certainly won’t be paying this bill then, and that anyone who thinks he will ‘have another think coming’. Here’s the audio: listen to ‘Cameron: EU demand ‘completely unjustified’ and ‘unacceptable’’ on audioBoom

This chart, courtesy of Mike Smithson, shows Ipsos-Mori’s polling on British membership of the European Union. It shows support for leaving the EU is no higher now than it was 20 years ago. I’ll wager this surprises you. As you can see, there has always been a constituency for leaving the EU. Public enthusiasm for the european project has always been conditional. Despite that, the unhappiness of a known known has generally proved more attractive than the uncertainty of a known unknown. (This, ahem, is also true of certain other constitutional questions with which we have wrestled recently.) But how can this be? How can UKIP be soaring in the

Imagine if David Cameron actually meant it. Imagine if he really did follow through with his implied threat to campaign for Brexit in the absence of better terms from Brussels. You can picture the televised address. An oak-panelled background with a large union flag hanging sedately in the corner, the PM with that furrowed house-captain expression he sometimes does. The script pretty much writes itself. ‘All of you know how hard I tried to secure a new deal. I was often criticised for being too conciliatory, but it was my duty to do whatever was in my power to reform the EU. I have to tell you today that the