Newspaper review: EU debate dominates papers

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22520538

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The Times concludes David Cameron's ill-fated attempt to placate his mutinous MPs has left him in "treacherous waters" with his authority challenged.

He has become the "bullied child in the playground", it says, with the Lib Dems stealing his sweets one day and the Tories humiliating him the next.

The paper despairs that the Conservatives are, once again, on a Kamikaze mission to self-destruct with a hardcore of the party more interested in leaving the EU than in having a Tory government.

Survival instinct

The Independent agrees that any attempt to quell the rising tide of Euroscepticism in the party is doomed to failure.

The "old obsession" with Europe is spreading, it warns, and is no longer confined to a "disaffected rump".

It sees the damage to the prime minister's authority as "catastrophic" and reflects Britain will ultimately be the loser if he allows himself to be "driven hither and thither by the whims of his party's neuroses".

The Financial Times wonders if anyone would be capable of taming the Tory beast.

It is not that Mr Cameron is a "remarkably negligent leader" - rather the Tories are a "remarkably unruly party" who, it thinks, may have crossed into "outright ungovernability".

Euroscepticism crowds out all else, the paper argues, even the survival instinct that keeps a party together.

It offers cold comfort to the PM with its conclusion "anyone not drawn from the party's hardcore would be as beleaguered as Cameron is now".

Welfare reforms

The Guardian says the prime minister is in danger of looking as weak as John Major at the height of the Maastricht crisis but cautions that this is not the time for the Labour Party to be smug.

Problems are piling up at Ed Miliband's door too it warns - not least his failure to articulate a convincing narrative on the economy and the welfare state.

It quotes the findings of a Joseph Rowntree Foundation report that suggests almost half of Labour supporters believe welfare recipients are undeserving and people would learn to stand on their own two feet if benefits were not so high.

A view, the paper notes, that is at odds with the party's current stance.

The Daily Telegraph agrees that this hardening of attitudes among Labour voters is likely to fuel the debate within the party over where to position itself on welfare reform.

Dropped sales

"My lover, the Monster" is the headline in the Daily Mirror which has an exclusive interview with Tia Sharp's grandmother whose former partner has pleaded guilty to the schoolgirl's murder.

And finally, the sliced white loaf will soon be toast according to the Daily Mail which says the humble UK staple cannot compete with our penchant for croissants, bagels and wraps.

Sales have dropped by 31 million loaves in the past year as the nation simply loses its taste for it.