PM’s tantrum not quite right

What the Prime Minister most resembled was a man going ballistic on receiving his credit card statement – even though he knew perfectly well it was coming. “I’m not paying that bill,” he said, and I like to think that he stamped his feet at this moment. “It’s not going to happen.”

In this I have some sympathy because credit card statements sometimes send me a funny colour, too. But this can only stretch so far, not least because Mr Cameron is playing games. He is doing the Farage shuffle in the hope that the audience sitting in the right-hand side of the auditorium will glance his way, instead of being distracted by the showy musical hall antics of Ukip’s leader.

Of particular concern to Mr Cameron is the popular act where Mr Farage tap-dances on the heads of politicians belonging to the other parties, while singing Rule Britannia at the same time as downing a pint of beer and smoking a cigarette.

Incidentally, it strikes me as strange that none of the other parties have yet come up with a slogan along the lines of: “Ukip if you want to, but we’re staying fully awake...” Well, they can have that one on me for free.

But back to Mr Cameron and his purple face. The allegedly unexpected bill from the EU for £1.7bn to be paid for by December 1 certainly sounds unreasonable. As far as this matter is understood by this columnist – and I do struggle at times to grasp my own bank statements – the extra money is the result of retrospective payments going back a number of years.

So it’s hardly welcome, but it is the way these things work within the EU, and not out of political spite, but merely for reasons of dull statistics and complicated accounting.

With this in mind, Mr Cameron risks looking foolish for two reasons. Either he knew this EU credit card bill was heading his way and he chose to make a fuss about it anyway so that he could look tough on Europe before the byelection in Rochester and Strood. Or he didn’t know it was coming – in which case he wasn’t doing his job properly.

I guess we just have to take our pick: nothing he said in the Commons on Monday added much to the picture.

All too tellingly, what this latest Euro-spat most illustrates is the low grade of political debate in this country about whether or not we should stay in Europe. This important matter is reduced to the usual playground spat, complete with play-acting and tit-for-tatting insults.

What we never seem to hear is a sensible, level-headed discussion about whether or not being part of Europe is good for Britain. Even to suggest such a thing will set some people off like car alarms on a windy day. Yet a recent Ipsos MORI opinion poll discovered the highest level of support for staying in the EU singe 1991.

As Ben Page, chief executive of the polling company, wrote in The Observer at the weekend, most voters are pragmatic about Europe: “Most are not obsessed about it – only eight per cent spontaneously see it as the key problem facing Britain.”

Well, you’d never guess that from the way the debate is conducted. And Mr Cameron getting red in the face about his credit-card bill doesn’t help much.

And, yes, I do realise there is one flaw in my chosen parallel: David Cameron is probably too rich to have ever needed to use a credit card, but never mind.

• ON MONDAY during a trip to Leeds, David Cameron was involved in a random-seeming incident when a man appeared to shove into him as he left a press conference.

The man claimed he was jogging. Well, he didn’t look much like a jogger to me. As for the predictable security fuss, in the end a public space is a public space and, aside from being encased in a bubble, Prime Ministers will always face some risk.

Worth cherishing in this matter is the police statement. After being briefly detained, the man was “de-arrested and allowed on his way”.

I wonder if he was “de-questioned” too; or, indeed, if he was “de-detained”.