British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband is to vow to end the country’s “small-minded isolationist” attitude to Europe if he becomes prime minister after an election in two weeks’ time.
In a speech yesterday, the left-leaning party leader was to accuse Conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron of risking Britain’s national interests by giving in to euroskeptics, according to pre-released remarks.
“David Cameron has presided over the biggest loss of influence for our country in a generation,” Miliband was to say in a speech at think tank Chatham House in London. “It is time to reject the small-minded isolationism that has characterized this government. Because this government’s approach has and weakened Britain at a time when the challenges are perhaps greater and more complex than at any time since the Second World War.”
Foreign policy has been little debated in the campaign ahead for the May 7 vote aside from references to immigration, something the Labour Party said showed the “growing insularity of British politics.”
In the speech, Miliband was to describe Cameron’s absence from peace talks on the Ukraine crisis between French, German, Russian and Ukrainian leaders as an “apt symbol of Britain’s isolation and waning influence.”
Miliband’s Labour Party and Cameron’s center-right Conservatives are neck-and-neck in polls, but on Thursday, the main betting shop firms made Miliband their favorite to become prime minister for the first time.
Advocating a “hard-headed multilateralism,” Miliband is to accuse Cameron of capitulating to the anti-EU, anti-immigration UK Independence Party (UKIP) by promising a referendum on Britain’s membership of the bloc in 2017 if he is re-elected prime minister.
“He has taken us to the edge of European exit because he has been too weak to control his own party and too anxious about the rise of UKIP, a rise he could and should have challenged, but pandered to instead,” Miliband was to say.
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