Today's Update From The Waugh Zone Is Titled: A HARD DAY’S NIGHT

* Paul Waugh

by Paul Waugh | Politics

It was hard, really hard, you know. Emerging from his four-hour working dinner in Brussels, David Cameron said “this is hard, it’s very hard and it’s going to take a lot of work”. In case we missed the message, he added that each of his four demands for EU reform was ‘hard’ to get agreement on. 

Tory Eurosceptics roll their eyes at this stuff, sniff the strong smell of expectations management and point out that it’s not really that hard to get agreement verbiage on three of the four Cameron areas (closer union, competitiveness, sovereignty). They add that on the one that matters most to many Brits - migration - the PM is in real trouble to deliver on his manifesto pledge to ban benefits for four years. More importantly, like John Major, the Eurosceps think this is all a sideshow to the bigger issue that the UK can’t control its borders while staying in the EU.

Still, the PM looked remarkably upbeat for someone who’s own words have come back to haunt him. Only yesterday he said he’d go ‘right through the night’ (the dinner broke up just after midnight). Yet despite the ridicule, he feels he really has got some ‘momentum’. A retreat on the 4-year plan to possibly a two-year ban (Hollande mooted that afterwards), an emergency brake or young Brits benefit ban could still happen when everyone comes back again in February. 

Angela Merkel really did her bit to help Cameron, spending most of her post-dinner press conference focusing on the UK rather than the migrant crisis. Crucially she offered hope of some treaty change wangle (likely a ‘protocol’) to help the UK. 

Michael Fallon was the Minister for the Today programme today, keeping a straight bat on the EU for the PM. And guess what? He said it was ‘hard’ to get agreement. On the four-year benefit ban, Fallon said “It cuts across a freedom that the others all believe in. It’s going to be very hard work.” But note that he watered down that manifesto pledge to ‘insist’ on the change: “the manifesto said we’ve got to tighten this up”.

What about the big picture? In his invaluable Friday column in the Telegraph, Fraser Nelson reveals how in 2013 George Osborne got officials to work round EU restrictions to allow £25m of support for making the new Star Wars movie in the UK. Osborne was allegedly booed by some at the film premiere, but Fraser reveals something much more significant about his stance on Europe: “The Chancellor has decided, whatever happens on migrant benefits, that Britain’s future lies in the European Union.” Why? Because he thinks the EU won’t have enough “economic rationality” to deliver a decent free trade deal after Brexit. It will want to penalise the UK as an example to others who want to break away. ‘Pour encourager les autres’, you might say.

The PM will be cheered by the hot news on UKIP today though. Douglas Carswell giving a strong hint that he wants his party leader to quit. He has said on BBC Radio Essex that “The Oldham by-election to me said very clearly that we need a fresh face….Let me put it another way: I don’t want to wake up the morning after the European referendum and hear people saying ‘it was the postal votes’.” 

Farage has hit back, telling the BBC Mr Carswell should "put up or shut up”. Carswell’s call "hasn't hit me cold - he has been saying this privately for some months” Farage said.

* Paul Waugh is the Executive Editor, Politics, HuffPost UK.