"Blair made two key concessions at the weekend, which adds to the UK's likely net payments from 2007 to 2013. The first was to increase the overall size of the EU budget, in order to spend more on help for the accession countries in eastern Europe. This raised the European budget from 1.03% of GDP to 1.045, a tiny change that will have cost the UK something much less than £1bn cumulatively over seven years.
The second concession was to cancel about £7bn of Thatcher's rebate, again over seven years. Here are the numbers: Once the overall budget had been set at 1.045% of GDP, the total British contribution would have amounted to about £72bn cumulatively from 2007 to 13, if the British rebate had never been invented. With that rebate remaining in full force, the UK contribution would have been only £34bn. And now, with Blair's concession, the net cost to Britain will be £41bn.
The prime minister's decision to concede about one-fifth of the Thatcher rebate will increase the average annual bill for the UK from 0.39% of our GDP, which is what it would have been with the Thatcher rebate, to 0.47% of GDP under the deal made last weekend. Even for some of our xenophobic friends in the British press, that difference of 0.08% of GDP must seem like slim pickings."
Put like this, perhaps Mr Blair's performance at the Brussels summit was not as bad as has been painted by most of the media.
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