Furious Cameron refuses to pay EU bill

British prime minister David Cameron’s troubled relationship with the EU plumbed new depths yesterday as he said Britain would not be paying more than €2.1bn in ‘top-up’ EU budget payments.

During a tense summit in Brussels yesterday, a furious Cameron claimed that Britain had been blindsided by the demand which was sent by the European commission to the UK Treasury last Friday, with the request that it be paid by December 1. Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi called the bills to nine countries, including Ireland, from the EU a “lethal weapon” at the summit.

Cameron said that he had not known about the bill until he was alerted to it by a journalist on Thursday evening.