David Cameron accused of leading Britain to EU exit due to trivial squabbles over benefit changes

Labour breaks silence on PM's EU renegotiation bid and urges Cameron to make the positive case for EU membership

David Cameron leaves 10 Downing Street ahead of the debate and vote in the House of Commons on joining the bombing campaign against the Islamic State group in Syria (AFP/Getty)

David Cameron has been accused of leading Britain to the EU exit door “by default” because of trivial squabbles over benefit changes for migrant workers.

The Labour party has until now remained relatively silent on the Prime Minister’s efforts to reform Britain’s membership of the European Union.

But after the Polish Prime Minister revealed that she and Mr Cameron did “not see eye-to-eye” over his proposal to make EU migrants wait four years before they can claim in-work benefits, Labour broke its silence and hit out at his negative diplomatic approach.

In a scathing assessment of Mr Cameron’s EU renegotiation strategy, the shadow Europe minister Pat McFadden accuses Mr Cameron of ignoring all the benefits of EU membership and says his only bargaining chip with EU leaders opposed to his demands is “flirting with recommending withdrawal from the EU”.

In an article for The Independent, Mr McFadden says this is akin to “holding a gun to our own heads”.

Instead of focussing on relatively small areas of benefit changes to EU migrants, Mr Cameron should shift the debate onto the positive aspects of membership, Mr McFadden said, such as the benefits of investment, exports, employment rights, membership of the world’s biggest single market and also the benefits brought by migrants coming to the UK for work.

“Yet all of those advantages are being put under threat by the way the Prime Minister is handling the renegotiation he has begun,” Mr McFadden wrote.

“As the latest leg of his tour around European capitals shows, instead of talking about the advantages of membership, he is focussed more and more on the area of benefits for migrant workers.

“While of course there should be fairness in the benefits system – it’s something Labour has argued for – most people who come here from elsewhere in the EU come to work hard and make a positive contribution to our country.

“Even the Government’s own Office for Budget Responsibility said this week that the Prime Minister’s plan on benefits would make little difference to immigration levels.”

Mr Cameron wants to secure four main changes to Britain’s membership of the EU: protection for the nine non-euro members states, exemption from the commitment to ‘ever-closer union’ and cutting red tape for businesses and limitations to EU migrants’ access to in-work benefits.

The last of these demands – making migrants wait four years before they can claim child and working tax credits or access to social housing – is the most contentious and Mr Cameron has faced firm opposition to the plan during his tour of Eastern European countries over the last week.

Urging Mr Cameron to stop getting bogged down in the details of negotiations over benefit changes, Mr McFadden wrote: “Ultimately, our membership is not just about access to tax credits and the Prime Minister has got himself in a tangle of his own choosing.

“Brexit by design is one thing – a conscious move out of the EU with all that would entail. But Brexit by default – recommending a future the Prime Minister does not want because he has not gotten his way over one specific issue – would be a disastrous failure of leadership.”