IN LAWN tennis and European Union budget fights alike, the British are fond of a heroic struggle that ends in defeat.

No sign of tennis on day three of David Cameron's tour of the Arab world, which has now reached the theme-park-like glitz of Doha, but British officials are briefing up a storm about a looming scrap with France and other “Club Med” EU members in Brussels. The battle is over the billions of euros in EU aid sent to north Africa and parts of the Middle East over the years, without a great deal to show for it by way of political reform. With the brushfires of revolt still burning across the region, Britain thinks it is high time for a serious debate about what, exactly, all this money is for.

The EU is good at imposing regulations on exports from the Muslim south, and hot as mustard on setting up such worthy, Euro-friendly bodies as a consumer protection agency in Egypt. Try selling milk or car parts from north Africa in Europe, and EU-funded inspectors will be all over you. Yet despite pouring millions into the regime of Hosni Mubarak, the EU never seemed to gain the leverage to stop his secret police torturing people.

In the words of one British official travelling with Mr Cameron: “There are very few solid examples of progress. We have continued to pour money into Egypt and other countries in the region, with very little conditionality applied.”

The British are right. Under the European Neighbourhood Policy, the EU is a huge donor in the region, indeed Europe is by some way the biggest source of aid to the Palestinian Authority. And yet Europe has gained pathetically little leverage with all this money.

Mr Cameron raised the lack of political and democratic strings attached to EU aid money at a recent European Council in Brussels, we learn. British diplomats have been primed to press home their point at a meeting to discuss the neighbourhood policy today,

Yet here is the thing. The British are going to struggle to win this argument, and I suspect they know it. The EU's neighbourhood policy has always divided the club. There is a Club Med group, involving France, Spain, Italy and the like, who have a strong and understandable interest pumping European money into countries that are (a) former colonies, (b) ancestral homelands for lots of their citizens and (c) a potential source of waves of illegal migration. There is a Nordic/ex-communist group which would like to see neighbourhood money heading to countries in the ex-Soviet sphere, from Ukraine to Moldova.

That leaves Britain looking, as so often, to the same handful of fellow budget-hawks for support, such as Germany and the Netherlands. Germany may be on side with this one, but long experience has taught the British not to put too much faith in such support: the Germans have a habit of sliding over to the French camp in the end.

So why fight? Well, from time to time, a fight on principle does a bit of good. What is the point of Europe bragging about its soft power, if it is all soft and no power?

Agreeing the EU's next multi-annual budget is going to be a huge slog, and Britain wants to put down a few markers about the good use of taxpayers' money.

To be a bit more cynical, in the world of British Euro-politics, a heroic defeat plays well back with voters home. Just ask Tim Henman about his fan-base.

To be still more cynical, the British have less to lose than the Club Med countries with their push for tough conditions on EU aid for despots in the south, for two big reasons.

Firstly, when it comes to trade with the Maghreb, say, Britain has much less at stake than France or Spain. And, to be fair, France is not only concerned about its commercial interests. I remember a big squabble over imports of cheap clothing from China, when I was based in Brussels. France was keen to see tariffs slapped on things like cotton shirts from China, and it would have been easy to assume that protectionism was at work. Except, I was told by French industry sources, the real concern in Paris was actually political: lots of cheap shirts on sale in France were made by young, male factory workers in north Africa, they said. The then president, Jacques Chirac, was worried that Chinese competition would destroy those factories, sending angry young men onto the streets of the Maghreb.

Secondly, Britain does lots of trade with non-democracies and autocratic states in the Arab world, but—handily enough—they mostly do not need EU aid because they are rich petro-states. So a clamp down on EU aid will not touch them.

If you think I am too cynical, I would merely mention the case of the Palestinian Authority. For better or for worse, a push to link aid to political reforms, human rights or good governance by the PA could prove deeply destabilising, in a corner of the world that does not need less stability. And funnily enough, when asked about the PA and European aid, British sources are not quite so gung-ho about imposing political conditions. Our enthusiasm for conditionality is conditional, in short.

More from Qatar in a bit.

This post is the third in a series chronicling the Prime Minister's trip to the Middle East. You can read the previous post here. The next post is here.

