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Enraged Blair slams `reactionary' UK Euroskeptics

British Prime Minister Tony Blair denounced "reactionary" British Euroskeptics for living in the era of Winston Churchill on Tuesday, as he mounted a passionate defense of the UK's membership of the EU.

Enraged by a UK Independence Party (Ukip) member of the European parliament (MEP), who attacked him for building "new sewers in Budapest," the prime minister let rip during a speech to the European parliament.

"You sit there with our country's flag -- but you do not represent our country's interests," he told Ukip's Nigel Farage, who had criticized a ?183 billion (US$320 million) EU package for eastern Europe.

"This is the year 2005, not 1945. We are not fighting each other any more," Blair said.

To loud cheers, Blair pointed to MEPs from 25 countries who had crowded in to a large committee room to hear his last address as EU president.

"These are our partners, our colleagues, and our future lies in Europe. And when you and your colleagues say, `what do we get for what we contribute to enlargement,' we get a Europe that is unified after years of dictatorships in the east, and we get economic development, and we get a budget which puts for once and for all an end to the need for the rebate. That's what we get, if we have the vision to seize it," Blair said.

Blair's assault came as he defended the EU budget brokered by Britain at last week's summit in Brussels, which sees Britain give up ?7 billion of its rebate during the 2007-2013 period.

There had been speculation that the British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown was unhappy with the deal, but yesterday details emerged of how one of the British Treasury's most senior officials was at the heart of the talks. John Cunliffe, the head of macroeconomic policy and international finance, endorsed the deal negotiated between Blair and French President Jacques Chirac.

"That is within my mandate," Cunliffe told senior British officials in Brussels last Friday.

Cunliffe, who frequently stands in for the chancellor at EU finance ministers' meetings, spoke with such confidence because the Treasury devised the system that will cut the rebate.

Under the deal, non-farming spending in the new member states will be progressively excluded from the current rebate calculations.

No cuts will be made to the rebate until 2009, the likely year of the next general election, handing the chancellor a generous windfall over the next four years.

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