Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday said Britain would not pay “anything like” the €2.1 billion the European Union wants from London after Eurosceptic media praised him for taking what they called a noble stand against money-grabbing “Eurocrats”.

An angry Cameron on Friday refused to pay the bill by a December 1 deadline, accusing the EU executive of ambushing him with an unacceptable demand in an appalling way.

EU Commissioner says there is no possibility of giving Britain more time to pay the bill

Yesterday, he went further saying he had no intention of paying the bill in its current form, suggesting he wanted it sharply reduced.

“We’re not paying €2 billion on the first of December and we’re not paying ... a sum anything like that,” Cameron told Parliament. “That is very clear.”

He has said the bill made it harder to make the case to keep Britain in the European Union before a membership referendum he has promised in 2017 if he is re-elected next year.

The payment dispute and the way it has been spun by the popular press and politicians highlighted Britain’s decades-old distrust of the EU, a shift towards greater Euroscepticism and the intemperate nature of any debate about Europe in Britain. Cameron’s Conservatives fear Ukip, which wants lower immigration and a British exit from the EU, threatens their re-election chances. It has poached two of Cameron’s lawmakers, winning its first elected seat in Britain’s Parliament this month, and is on track to win a second in November.

Britain was hit with the higher bill because its economy has become more successful, something evidenced by data provided by its own Office for National Statistics. Other EU states were clobbered with painful bills too, and in the past Britain has been the beneficiary of such EU budget redistributions. But much of that nuance has been lost in a public debate where the country’s right-wing press has cast Britain as being punished by the EU for its rising economy – the fastest-growing in the EU – to pay for the mistakes of two of its oldest historical foes: France and Germany.

“Why should Britain be punished with the shock EU bill for fragile success while France is rewarded with a rebate for abject failure?” the best-selling Sun tabloid asked yesterday.

“Why should we make taxpayers borrow £1.7 billion only to hand it over to feckless bunglers?

“Eurocrats like Jose Barroso [the outgoing commission president] can strut and bluster about our legal obligations but we have the whip hand.”

With many Britons blaming the EU for what they see as unacceptably high levels of immigration from the bloc in recent years, such rhetoric goes down well with many voters, even as, incongruously, opinion polls show support for staying in the EU is at its highest in 23 years.

Yesterday, the EU warned Britain it would put the country’s cherished EU budget rebate at risk if it tried to change the rules in response to the surprise bill. Britain’s rebate, which is €5.9 billion for 2014, wascreated to offset the relatively lower share of cash the country got from EU agricultural and infrastructure funds compared with other countries. It is controversial with some member states.

EU Budget Commissioner Jacek Dominik said there was “no possibility” under current EU rules of giving Britain more time to pay the bill. He warned it would be risky for Britain to seek to change the current agreement over member states’ contributions because it also covered the rebate.

“If you open this act for future negotiations, you open a Pandora’s box,” Dominik said.