Ha ha ha! More EU budget negotiation nonsense from the government:

“”We are in no way underestimating the difficulties of doing a deal, but equally nobody should underestimate our determination to try to see if a deal is possible”

Translated, that roughly means that they’ve given up on sorting the budget entirely.

It seems that for once Blair was entirely right when he said that the EU was facing “not a crisis of political institutions, [but] a crisis of political leadership” back in June. After all, that quote comes from a speech made just a week before he took over the EU presidency. Based on his “achievements” over the last five months, if this hasn’t been a crisis of political leadership, nothing has.