Whether the issue is migration,markets or EU membership, British ministers will get the best results in Europe by making alliancesWhen a politician has a reputation for calculation, or everything they say or effect is seen through that prism. The tale may be apocryphal,but when the wily French statesman Talleyrand died in 1838, the no less wily Austrian chancellor Metternich’s response is said to acquire been: “I wonder what he meant by that?” These days it is getting to be a bit like this with George Osborne. When the chancellor of the exchequer opens his mouth, and the question increasingly often asked is not what he said,but why he said it.
Mr Osborne’s interview this week with the Daily Telegraph on Britain’s place in Europe can certainly be treated in this way. The chancellor’s core theme was the single market. The central attraction of EU membership was economic, he said. So it was necessary to fix the economic aspects of the relationship in order to win Britain’s EU referendum. The objective should be a single market of free trade” with rules that would make that market work.
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Source: theguardian.com