PM faces fresh Europe rebellion
PRIME Minister David Cameron last night called for national governments, including Britain’s, to bolster the funds available to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Yet any move to raise the UK’s contribution to the Eurozone bailout via the IMF could be shot down by a combination of Tory rebels and opposition MPs.
“There is a big opportunity here because if the world could come together and solve some of its problems — the worst of which is the Eurozone crisis — then actually that would be a big boost to the British economy,” Cameron said.
Labour’s shadow chancellor Ed Balls hit out at the use of the IMF to intervene in the Eurozone’s “structural” problems. “The IMF’s job is to support individual countries with solvency crises, not to solve a structural problem caused by Eurozone countries being unable to agree the necessary steps to support and maintain their monetary union,” Balls said.
“That’s why this summer we said that additional funding for the IMF should be held back until the details of the permanent Eurozone bailout fund had been agreed,” Balls added. His words raise the possibility of an unlikely union between the opposition benches and Eurosceptic Conservative MPs, who last month staged the largest ever rebellion over Europe.