Vote for Juncker? It was like scene from Spartacus!
CAMERON depended on Angela Merkel to help him stop European federalist Jean-Claude Juncker getting the job but was ultimately let down by her.
Cameron and Merkel discuss Juncker in the No 10 flat alone in February 2014.
She tells him not to go in too hard against Juncker but convinces Cameron she will help him kill off Juncker’s candidacy. Her message, as he reports it, is: ‘Don’t worry, David. I’m not a fool.’ However, she is taken by surprise by pro-Juncker feeling in Germany and caves in.
Cameron is left high and dry but insists on ‘going down in flames’.
Boris Johnson angers No10 when he dismisses the bid to block Juncker as the ‘quintessence of turd-polishing pointlessness’.
At the G7 summit in Brussels in June, Cameron invites Merkel for a latenight drink at Rue Ducale, the elegant residence of the British permanent representative. She tells him the game is up. ‘I thought I could stop it but I was wrong,’ she says.
‘I don’t accept that, we should not give in,’ replies Cameron.
He feels he has been given undertakings that she has not delivered.
They meet again at the summer residence of the Swedish prime minister where they sit up talking until two o’clock in the morning over several bottles of wine. Cameron keeps bringing their conversation back to Juncker, but Merkel will not have it.
She is clearer than ever that it has to be Juncker, by now under attack from the British press as ‘Junck the drunk’ for his supposed drinking habits. The next morning, Cameron, who
likes wild-water swimming, goes for a swim in the lake.
He is determined to force all the other European leaders to vote on the Juncker appointment in order to face up to their actions. In the vote later that month, all, bar Britain and Hungary, support Juncker. Later, describing the vote to his staff, Cameron compares it to an iconic scene from the film Spartacus, with most of the other leaders saying: ‘I am for Juncker’,‘ I am for Juncker’, ‘I too am for Juncker’. Without Merkel’s support, Cameron was very isolated in Europe.