Some Quotes on the EU Treaty/Treaty Amendment/Whatever it is...

"I said before coming to Brussels that if I couldn't get adequate safeguards for Britain in a new European treaty then I wouldn't agree to it.  What is on offer isn't in Britain's interests so I didn't agree to it." - Cameron just after deploying his "veto"


"Clearly the prime minister and I worked together on the request for the safeguards which we were seeking.  Let's be clear. We were not seeking some great repatriation of powers from Europe back to Britain, we were not even seeking some great exceptional treatment for the City of London." - Clegg on Friday




"We have protected Britain's financial services, and manufacturing companies that need to be able to trade their businesses, their products, into Europe.  We've protected all these industries from the development of eurozone integration spilling over and affecting the non-euro members of the European Union." - Osborne

"David Cameron asked for something that we all thought was unacceptable: a protocol in the treaty that would allow the United Kingdom to be exempt from a certain number of regulations on financial services. We weren't able to accept that because we consider, on the contrary, that a good part of the worries of the world come from the deregulation of financial services." - French President Nicholas Sarkosy

"I am bitterly disappointed by the outcome of last week's summit." - Clegg on Sunday

"We have an absolutely enormous opportunity here if we now stick to our guns.  If the eurozone is going to go down this road towards more regulation and more union and more uniformity and higher costs, we should be the off-shore haven, we should be the Hong Kong to their China." - Dan "I Hate the NHS" Hannan MEP

"The Report concludes that RBS’s failure amid the systemic crisis ultimately resulted from poor decisions made by the RBS management and Board. But deficiencies in the global capital regime and liquidity regulations made the crisis much more likely. In addition, flaws in the FSA’s supervisory approach provided insufficient challenge to RBS." - The report by the FSA into the failure of the Royal bank of Scotland.


"As you know, one member state was opposed to amending the Lisbon Treaty.  The United Kingdom, in exchange for giving its agreement, asked for a specific protocol on financial services which, as presented, was a risk to the integrity of the internal market. This made compromise impossible. All other heads of government were left with the choice between paying this price or moving ahead without the UK's participation and accepting an internal agreement among them." - Jose Mannuel Barroso, Head of the European Commission

"26 of the 27 states [had] shown responsibility... shared sovereignty is better than sovereignty taken over by the markets" - French MEP Joseph Daul

"Is this not the same Prime Minister who month after month has been castigating working people for not staying at meetings to deal with pensions?
"He has walked out, without using his veto; he has walked out, without getting a rebate like Mrs Thatcher; and he has walked out without a couple of opt-outs like Major.  As Del Boy would say, what a plonker!" - Dennis Skinner MP