MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

In spite of “bitter disappointment” Lib-Dem will remain in UK coalition

PM Cameron vote was “bad for Britain” said Deputy PM Nick Clegg

Divisions over Europe within the British coalition government were exposed when David Cameron's deputy said an EU summit that ended with the prime minister deploying his veto was a “bitter disappointment” and “bad for Britain.”

However, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who heads the smaller, pro-Europe Liberal Democrats, denied that the coalition which took office under the Conservative Cameron in May 2010 might now collapse.

“It would be even more damaging for us as a country if the coalition government were now to fall apart. That would create economic disaster for the country at a time of great economic uncertainty,” Clegg told a television interviewer.

Conservative Foreign Secretary William Hague echoed that view, saying it was vital for the coalition to continue as Britain teeters on the edge of another recession.

“Although some of these different views about Europe have come to the fore in recent days the Lib Dems are clear, as we are, that the coalition continues and that's in the vital interest of this country,” Hague told Sky News television.

But the divisions run deep. Clegg turned his fire on EU sceptic members of the Conservative Party who are pressing Cameron to follow up his veto on European Union treaty change with a referendum on ending Britain's membership of the 27-nation bloc.

“A Britain which leaves the EU will be considered to be irrelevant by Washington and would be considered a pygmy in the world when I want us to stand tall and lead in the world,” Clegg told the BBC.

At a Brussels summit on Friday, Britain vetoed a plan for a new EU treaty that would impose closer EU control over national government budgets in order to curb the bloc's debt crisis. Cameron said the proposed deal risked exposing London's powerful financial services industry to unwelcome EU regulation.

The other member states including the 17 using the Euro, now plan to adopt a separate pact without Britain, leaving the UK alone as never before in the EU, a club it joined in 1973 but which Britons have long viewed with distrust.