“Silly” EU demands for Rishi Sunak to inform the bloc when he intends to call an election in the UK have sparked a swift Brexiteer backlash in Westminster.
The Prime Minister is reportedly being enraged by European diplomats for “dragging his feet” in announcing the date of this year’s British elections.
A crucial meeting that the bloc was hoping to conduct this year has been hampered by Mr. Sunak’s choice to keep the public in the dark about the precise date of the election.
However, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg took issue with the idea that the UK should notify the EU in advance of when it plans to hold general elections.
The Tory MP for North East Somerset said: “It is a silly complaint. The Prime Minister needs to tell the Cabinet and the King before the EU and its member states.”
Senior Brexiteer Sir John Redwood concurred with his Conservative colleague: “The UK should decide its own election dates and democratic arrangements.”
EU diplomats are said to believe Mr Sunak’s delay in naming an election date is because he is still not ruling out a May poll.
One told the FT the hold-up was now “frustrating” them because it was making it harder to agree on a date for the European Political Community (EPC) meeting and accused No 10 of “stalling”.
Another said Downing Street was making the meeting logistically harder.
A third vented: “We keep asking for a date and they [the UK] say they can’t give us one ‘for obvious reasons’, which we take to mean they have not fully decided about the election.”