Tag Archives: David Cameron

December 17, 2012 · 9:49 am

Honeyball’s Weekly Round-Up

Yesterday the Telegraph reported that the Prime Minister had signed a deal with the leaders of all 27 EU countries to strengthen Europe’s ability to deploy troops rapidly and effectively in any future crisis.

Of course a backlash from his own MPs has already formed. One said the latest move was “the first step to creating a ‘European Army’.”

And Douglas Carswell, Conservative MP for Clacton, was reported in the article to have said: “This really shows that we can’t trust our negotiating team. You turn your back for two minutes and they go and sign up to something as daft as this.

“This might look like a good deal for those in Number 10 but outside Westminster it is anything but a good deal.

“If anyone seriously believes that it is in our national interest to hand over our defence to the people running the euro then we would need our heads examined,” Carswell said.

And Tory MP Peter Bone called on the Prime Minister to “come to the House and clarify the position”.

This sought of response peppered with language designed to spread fear but which actually shows a complete lack of knowledge also indicates why the Tories are in such a mess over Europe.

Their approach, as we know well by now, lacks clarity and is fragmented. Cameron has failed to get any unity from his party and it’s going to continue to cause problems for him.

You can read the article in full here.

As I have been saying for some time, the Tories cannot simply pick and choose what part of the EU they do want to be part of. It’s not as simple as that.

Francois Hollande used a fantastic line which summed up the situation perfectly, after getting tired with Cameron’s strategy of exploiting the euro crisis as an excuse to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s EU membership and claw back powers from Brussels. Hollande said of Cameron’s plans: “Europe is not a Europe where you can take back competencies. It’s not a Europe ‘a la carte’.”

One of the biggest challenges Cameron would face if he continued plans to renegotiate the relationship with Europe would be to get the 26 other governments to allow concessions for Britain.

It’s messy, improbable and, as Ian Traynor pointed out in his article in the Guardian on Saturday, it’s certainly unlikely that EU treaties would be re-opened before the next European Parliament elections in 2014. You can read his article in full here.

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December 10, 2012 · 9:14 am

Honeyball’s Weekly Round-Up

Earlier this week I wrote how Boris Johnson is working hard to show (convince maybe) the Tory Party that he can lead them. Last week he did this by revealing plans to appease the Eurosceptic while not upsetting those happy with the current policy.

The Mayor of London said in an interview with the Times that he would prefer a “minimalist EU stripped down to the single market.”

In my blog I explained: “What this really means is that the social and employment legislation associated with the single market – health and safety at work, maternity rights and much more, will go. This is what the Tories really want. Rights for people at work are, as we know, anathema to many Tories.”

As I stated it’s difficult to see how the EU would agree to such a deal.

Indeed France has already indicated that it’s beginning to lose patience with the UK, after the Governor of the Bank of France said that he wants London stripped of its status as Europe’s financial capital.

Noyer said: ““Most of the euro business should be done inside the euro area. It’s linked to the capacity of the central bank to provide liquidity and ensure oversight of its own currency.”

You can read more on Mr Noyer’s call here.

The government must be careful what it wishes for, Cameron must be measured and as I’ve said all along he needs to be mindful that even attempting to renegotiate powers is not in any way an easy process.

You can read my blog from earlier in the week with more thoughts on this, here.

Jackie Ashley’s article in yesterday’s Observer, suggested that older women are the “nation’s great untapped resource.” She cited Labour as taking the lead in tapping into skills and experience which otherwise go to waste, and she warns the other parties ignore this demographic at their peril.

She explores how the baby boomer generation who enjoyed much greater freedom are now finding that they are ‘sandwich carers’, responsible for children as well as parents.

This week she will be part of an inaugural meeting of a new panel set up by Harriet Harman and Yvette Cooper; ‘The Older Women’s Commission’ will attempt to change attitudes towards older women. It’s an enormous task but this is an interesting idea for a task force which will undoubtedly come up with some innovative and exciting ideas about how we can tackle this issue. Read her article here.

Finally, congratulations to Harriet Harman who last week celebrated 30 years as a Member of Parliament.

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December 5, 2012 · 11:11 am

Boris Johnson’s bid to lead the Conservative Party gathers momentum

You have to feel sorry for the beleaguered David Cameron. Caught between a rampant Boris Johnson on one flank and his Eurosceptic wing on the other, Cameron clearly doesn’t know which way to turn.

Today’s Times reports that Cameron may urge the public in a referendum to support the looser relationship with Brussels he hopes to negotiate. However, Cameron is prepared apparently to give the country the chance to say no to such a deal. Such a result would effectively be seen as a vote to leave the European Union.

Although David Cameron has not, as yet, made his well trailed speech on EU membership, he is obviously going in only one direction – a referendum which may well signal Britain’s exit from the EU.

Yet before we get there, the Prime Minister will have to negotiate with the EU this much hyped change in Britain’s status. He seeks to take us from the heart to the periphery getting rid of what he and the Tory Party see as troublesome regulations on the way.

There is one extremely serious flaw in this approach which is obvious yet almost virtually ignored, namely that the EU may well not play ball. The idea that powers can be “repatriated” from Brussels to London is at present purely a Conservative Party construct. Although Germany may be making some helpful noises, there are those who would be glad to see the back of Britain.

While it is true that we are a contributor country to the EU budget that does not necessarily mean there will be unanimous agreement to go along with the Tory demands and negotiate in the way David Cameron envisages. There are, as we all know, very many ways to conduct EU negotiations and since it will be 26 member states against Britain, I would hazard a guess that David Cameron is not in a very strong position.

Enter both Christian Noyer and Boris Johnson. Mr Noyer, Governor of the Bank of France, makes it clear in today’s Telegraph that he wants London stripped of its status as Europe’s financial hub, saying, “Most of the euro business should be done inside the euro area. It’s linked to the capacity of the central bank to provide liquidity and ensure oversight of its own currency.” 

“We’re not against some business being done in London, but the bulk of the business should be under our control. That’s the consequence of the choice by the UK to remain outside the euro area.”

Meanwhile Boris Johnson, according to the Times, would prefer a minimalist EU stripped down to the single market. What this really means is that the social and employment legislation associated with the single market – health and safety at work, maternity rights and much more, will go. This is what the Tories really want. Rights for people at work are, as we know, anathema to many Tories.

Withdrawing from one side of the single market while keeping the part the Conservatives see as good for the British economy may just not be a runner. It’s difficult to see how and why the rest of the EU would allow the UK such power without responsibility.

David Cameron has a long way to go to realise his dream of the EU allowing the UK to become semi-detached on its own terms rather than those of the EU as a whole. What is more, the CBI, Britain’s foremost business organisation, want Britain to stay in the EU. Cameron is, indeed, between a rock and a hard place, digging an ever deeper hole for himself.

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November 28, 2012 · 11:47 am

Are women better off today than their mothers were?

Soon after I joined the Labour Party in London in the dim and distant past my Constituency Labour Party Women’s Section (yes, that was in the days when the Labour Party still had a thriving women’s organisation) held a discussion entitled “Are you better off than your mother?” I remember it to this day because it seemed such a pertinent subject and a good way of evaluating where women were going.

On the whole, we thought we were better off than our mothers, though with strong caveats. We were generally better educated, had a higher standard of living and believed more opportunities were open to us.

I am not so sure the current generation of 20 something women can feel the same. Reaction is all around us: the Church of England has refused women bishops, there is currently no woman on the board of the European Central Bank and the Tory-led coalition Cabinet has only five women out of a membership of 24. As if that were not bad enough, Prime Minister Cameron recently told the CBI that equality impact assessments are indispensible in his drive to cut “red tape”. In other words, measures that protect women are mere regulation which should be abolished.

We are seeing a damaging and destructive retrograde pattern. Forty per cent of jobs in the public sector are held by women. Cuts therefore hit them disproportionately. Quoted in Sunday’s Observer Ceri Goddard from the Fawcett Society said: ” The diminishing role of the state is going to have a significantly negative impact on women’s lives….The state as a public sector employer and a provider of services such as childcare has played a huge part in women’s progress for 30 years.”

Women are not only losing their jobs. There is also a lack of women at the top of our institutions, despite research which shows that diverse leadership creates more positive outcomes than that of men alone. For the first time women’s progress has virtually halted, a situation which may get worse rather than better.

Much of this has to do with the current ascendancy of what could loosely be termed reactionary forces. We have a right-wing government in Britain bolstered by some extremely right-wing Tory MPs. Our country’s economy is effectively in the hands of six men – David Cameron, George Osborne, Oliver Letwin, Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander and David Laws. I defy anyone to spot any real difference between these paragons. Even the dear old Church of England is now in hock to an alliance between the conservative Anglo-Catholic wing and the conservative evangelicals who came together to block women bishops.

The plain truth is that women do better under centre-left governments when progress rather than reaction is the driving force. The number of women MPs has gone up every time Labour has had a majority in the House of Commons, culminating in 120 following the Labour landslide in 1997. Tellingly of this 120, 101 were Labour women MPs out of a Labour total of 419 seats won. The Tories had only 13 women out of 165 seats in the House of Commons while the Lib-Dems won 46 seats with three women. 

The results for the 2010 were as follows: Tories 306 seats won with 49 women MPs, Labour managed to take 258 constituencies and had 81 women while the Lib-Dems gained 57 seats returning seven women.

Labour’s record on women MPs is streets ahead of the Conservatives, both now and in the past. Women do not do well when the right is in the dominant force, in politics or any other walk of life. I hope all those women who are suffering the effects of the recession and the seeming reverse in women’s fortunes will take this message to heart.

The answer to the question, “Are we better off that out mothers were?” lies to a large extent in whether progressive forces or right-wing reaction were in power across our national institutions at the time our mothers were making their way. As women we were and undeniably will be better off under Labour.

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November 13, 2012 · 8:00 am

The Tories should look to their own record in the House of Commons before ruling out quotas for women on company boards

Maria Miller in the Sunday Times a couple of days ago derided what she called Labour’s “obsession” with the number of women on company boards.

At least we now know where the Tories stand on the issue. As the Sunday Times points out, Miller’s comments signal a shift in the Tory-led Coalition’s approach to women in the workplace.

In February 2011 Government Ministers welcomed a landmark report by Lord Davies of Abersoch which set a target of 25 per cent female representation on the boards of the top 100 listed companies by 2015. Earlier this year David Cameron said he would not rule out going further and using quotas as a means of getting women into top executive jobs, according to the Sunday Times.

Miller, it appears, is now moving away from Cameron’s position. She apparently sees helping women juggle work and family life and providing greater access to childcare as the answer to getting more women on to company boards.  While both of these are extremely laudable aims, they are only steps on the road to equality for women in top posts.

A look at the Tories’ record in electing women to the House of Commons is instructive. Having introduced all women shortlists (the parliamentary equivalent of quotas) for Commons constituencies before the 1997 general election, 31 per cent of current Labour MPs are women. The Tories, who have no mandatory system but rely on voluntary measures, have only 16 per cent.

Later this week European Commissioner Viviane Reding will make a further announcement about her plans for more women on the boards of leading companies. Miller will, of course, continue to oppose quotas. She also claims that Viviane Reding’s proposal has already been rejected once, which is quite simply not true. In actual fact, as opposed to Tory EU make-believe, when Reding introduced her ideas at a recent meeting of the European Commission, no decision was taken in order to allow time for further discussions – hardly a rejection.

In the course of the Sunday Times article Miller inevitably trotted out the old cliché that women want and expect to reach the top on merit not because of political correctness. I get extremely angry with this attitude, implying as it does that women do not have the ability to fill and do well in top jobs and that women appointed as part of a quota system will merely be tokens.

Women are just as able and intelligent as men. They do, however, have children and sadly discrimination still exists. Quotas are a means of getting women to where they should be. Once that is achieved, quotas will no longer be needed.

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November 7, 2012 · 9:00 am

Britain’s EU bill explained without the anti-European hype

Mark Reckless, Bill Cash, Douglas Carswell and the other feral Tory Eurosceptics are quite simply wrong on the EU budget. At best they have either not bothered to do their homework or quite simply and naively believe the plethora of misinformation that surrounds us in Britain. At worst they are so utterly opposed to the European Union that they will always twist the truth to suit their own purposes.

I was particularly disappointed by an article in the Sunday Times full of prejudice taking little account of the facts. Britain actually received a £5 billion rebate back from the EU last year and will continue to get this sum adjusted for inflation for every subsequent year. The reason the UK is one of the highest contributors to the EU is that we are one of the largest member states.

What is more, the EU budget is nothing like as huge as current folk lore would have us believe. In 2011 it was € 140 billion. The average EU citizen pays only about 50p on average per day to finance the annual budget which represents only around 1% of EU-27 Gross Domestic Product

The budget is, in addition, always balanced, meaning nothing is spent on debt. Moreover 94% of what is paid into the EU budget is spent in Member States on EU funded programmes, many of which are about economic development creating jobs and generating wealth. Those who complain about EU payments to Kosovo being lost to corruption as outlined in the Sunday Times would do well to understand that this is proportionately a very small sum of money. Of course, corruption is always wrong, but the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown decision to support Kosovo was made in good faith with the aim of rebuilding the war torn country.

I get very annoyed when we are told that the EU budget and almost everything else is imposed by Brussels. The budget and, indeed all European legislation, is decided by elected politicians, in the European Parliament and in the Council of Ministers comprising member states’ elected governments. The EU never “imposes” anything on member states; it is all agreed by elected governments and elected MEPs.

The Sunday Times article sadly relied on briefing from the Open Europe think tank. They are by their own admission anti-EU as this quote from their website demonstrates: “While we [Open Europe] are committed to European co-operation, we believe that the EU has reached a critical moment in its development. Globalisation, enlargement, successive No votes in EU referenda and the Eurozone crisis have discredited the notion of ‘ever closer union’ espoused by successive generations of political and bureaucratic elites.”

While this is an opinion, it is not the only one and the Sunday Times would have done well to take on board other arguments. They tell us that 53% of those in David Cameron’s Witney constituency favour withdrawal from the EU. That means that 47% do not, enough I would have thought for their views to be taken on board.

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November 6, 2012 · 8:09 am

Clegg’s instincts are right but his bid to assert himself just looks desperate

Repatriation of powers from the European Union to Britain remains a thorn in David Cameron’s side. The movement for “Europe Light” initially dreamt up, I believe, by William Hague back in the mists of time, is really causing the Prime Minister a lot of problems, Nick Clegg being the latest.

The issue is creating difficulty principally because it is a total non-starter. The EU treaties, to which successive British governments have given their assent, are designed to be treaties, international agreements to which all parties adhere. This is an age-old idea universally recognised in more or less its present form for at least 2000 years. Once you have decided to be in, any changes require the agreement of all parties. Unilateral tinkering with the EU by the UK on its own is quite simply not on the agenda. Whatever Britain wants will have to be agreed by the other 26 member states.

Nick Clegg has now finally joined the growing ranks of those who see sense. It is just sad that it took him so long given his background in the EU as both an MEP and as a member of staff in the cabinet of a European Commissioner. Clegg seems to be ruling out trying to use the forthcoming revision of the Lisbon Treaty to make an attempt to repatriate powers, maybe because he is catching up with the idea that other EU member states may just tell Britain to get real. No-one wants to be associated with failure, least of all a struggling leader of Britain’s third political party on the verge of annihilation.

Repatriation of powers is pure smoke and mirrors as you read here a long time ago. Theresa May’s cack-handed approach to taking back 130 justice and home affairs powers with a view to renegotiating opting back into some of them later bears all the hall marks of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. It would be laughably pathetic if it weren’t so serious.

Meanwhile poor Nick Clegg is trying to inject some common sense into the coalition, now driven by a clique of feral Tories to whom being anti-EU with withdrawal top of the agenda is a raw and terrifying religion. These are the people who secured the leadership of the Conservative Party for David Cameron, and it’s now pay back time.

It is deeply tragic that the future of our country is in the hands of very small bunch of nutters. There are, of course, things in the EU which need change and reform – it would be foolish to pretend otherwise. However, it’s the same with any body politic wherever it may be. No-one seriously thinks Britain is all sweetness and light and that everything is perfect.

If Clegg were stronger and the Liberal-Democrats less excited by power, the relationship with the EU could well be the issue that tears the coalition apart. Yet that’s not the way it’s going. The coalition is much more likely to be destroyed by a visceral and seemingly unresolvable conflict between the Tory Eurosceptic zealots and the forces of government both in the UK and the EU.

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October 19, 2012 · 11:04 am

Interview in Evening Standard on my work for women

I am interviewed in today’s Evening Standard by Political Editor Joe Murphy on my work in Europe on women, and especially on the need for more women on company boards. You can read the interview here.

Here is the interview:

Britain risks looking like a “dinosaur” if David Cameron blocks tough quotas for women in company boardrooms, Labour’s Euro-MP for London said today.

In an interview with the Evening Standard, Mary Honeyball said heavyweight nations such as France and Germany were dismayed that the UK Government has forged an alliance with tiny states such as Latvia and Malta to stop quotas.

She said: “We are going to look like dinosaurs if we stand in the way of action to promote women without even waiting to see what the detailed proposals are.

“What David Cameron has done in putting together this strange alliance of small countries is not going down at all well. It does not make us look powerful or impressive. It just looks like Britain is being prehistoric and difficult.”

Ms Honeyball, who represents the UK Labour representative in the Women’s Rights committee in the Strasbourg parliament, is backing European commissioner Viviane Reding who is drafting plans to force listed companies to reserve at least 40 per cent of their non-executive directorships  for women by 2020 or face fines.

UK ministers prefer a voluntary target of 25 per cent of FTSE 100 seats by 2015 but Ms Honeyball said: “I don’t think that is ambitious enough. Quotas have really worked well in Norway and France and now it is just accepted. But there is a culture in this country and when you have so few women on board it becomes  difficult to break through.”

The MEP compares the controversy with the row over all-women shortlists in the Labour Party in the 1990s. “There was serious opposition and even legal action to stop it, and then there were all the jibes about Blair Babes and women who only got to Parliament through quotas. But that has all gone away now because women MPs have shown they can get on with the job.”

She would like Ed Miliband’s shadow ministerial team to come out fighting for Ms Reding’s plan when the details are published. “They are keeping a bit quiet at the moment.”

The MEP, a leading campaigner at Strasbourg against sex traffickers, revealed how her efforts to protect young women were reinforced by the horrific discovery that an old school friend who vanished in the 1970s had been one of the victims of serial killers Fred and Rose West.

Lucy Partington went missing in 1973 and her fate was not known for another 20 years. Ms Honeyball,  an 18-year-old growing up in Cheltenham, was among school friends questioned by police baffled by her disappearance.

“I knew her quite well in our last two years at school,” said the MEP. “After she disappeared there was no news at all for all those years. I don’t think any of us in our worst nightmares dreamed what had happened to her.”

In fact Lucy, a cousin of novelist Martin Amis, had been abducted while waiting at a bus stop that the young Mary also used. But that was not known until her remains were excavated from the Wests’ basement in 1994.

“I heard the news on television and they showed a photograph taken of her at the time she disappeared,” she said. “I immediately phoned a friend we were both at school with. Your first reaction is to think ‘this cannot be possible’, but then it sinks in over time and it is something that stays with you forever.”

Ms Honeyball, an MEP for 12 years, has used her contacts in Europe to campaign for tougher laws against people traffickers who bring thousands of young women and girls into London as sex workers. She praised the Metropolitan Police for making serious efforts to prosecute the criminals behind the trade but says the police in some of the countries where the women originate do not bother.

“All crimes are  underground, but sex trafficking is deeper underground than most,” she said. “But it is such a London issue because this is where many women and girls from eastern Europe end up. Political pressure is needed to make other countries treat this as the serious crime it is.”

She is also trying to ban sex ads in local newspapers, which she says are often used by the criminal gangs who have coerced women into prostitution. “I sympathise with local newspapers that are struggling, but that’s no excuse for taking adds that are actually part of a trade that is not only morally unacceptable, but also criminal.”

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October 12, 2012 · 10:28 am

Cameron and Hague are being dishonest on Europe

The excellent David Aaronovitch of the Times now joins the FT’s Janan Ganesh in the ranks of national political commentators who are getting to grips with the European Union.

Aaronovitch’s colourful metaphor in yesterday’s Times summed up current Government’s position and showed just how flawed their line on the EU really is.

David had a childhood friend called Denny with whom he played toy soldier games re-enacting the Napoleonic Wars. Denny, the French commander, was, according to Aaronovitch, “dashing, ingenious and fatally elaborate. His plans were complex and daring, involving clever feints and diversions. But to come to fruition they relied on the other players behaving in ways that they simply didn’t. So usually he lost.”

The brutal fact of the matter is that the while Cameron-Hague “route map” may appeal to Eurosceptics, and maybe even those who are lukewarm on the subject, these are not the people Messrs C&H will have to convince.

In order to achieve the holy grail of treaty renegotiation and repatriation of powers from Brussels to London, the British Government will have to convince all 26 other EU member states that this is in their interest, the interest of the EU as a whole. Aside from some justice and home affairs matters where the UK can opt out, the idea that powers will come back to Britain is utter pie in the sky.

I would ask all of you reading this to seriously ask yourself why would the 26 other EU member states agree to the UK taking back powers? EU treaties are exhaustively negotiated and eventually agreed by all the countries. In most instances change can therefore only happen if all member states, or at the very least a substantial majority, agree.

The feral Tory Eurosceptics claim to love the EU single market. In order for trade to be fair across the single market with no country having an unfair advantage or disadvantage, the market is regulated and laws put in place to secure the same treatment for employees across the EU. Membership of the single market therefore confers responsibilities as well as rights.

It is these rights the Tories want to repatriate, to destroy in other words. Employment and social legislation would go as would the equalities agenda. This Conservative-led Government wants the UK to enjoy the privileges of the EU single market without its responsibilities.

I ask you again, why would the other 26 member states confer this special status on the UK? Why would 26 countries who accept the responsibilities as well as the rights of the single market allow one country, who, to be honest they don’t really like, to opt out of the difficult stuff?

The rest of the EU is simply not going to behave as Cameron and Hague want them to. David Aaronovitch’s analysis is far more realistic: In his piece yesterday he puts forward this scenario:

“In the run up to the European elections the Conservatives will announce their commitment to a referendum on Europe based on their negotiations about powers. A year later they’ll go to the country on a manifesto based on negotiating the new balance and promising a referendum based on the results. [Assuming they win the 2015 election which I don’t think they will] they’ll then negotiate – their hand supposedly strengthened by having won an election on those terms – and a referendum will finally be held in 2017 or 2018. In their imaginations the referendum will endorse the newly negotiated position and Britain and possibly a few other countries will take their places, um, somewhere in an imagined optimal adjacent European space, where you get all the advantages of European association and few of the downsides.”

Dream on Messrs Cameron and Hague. I assure you your dishonesty will be found out.

 

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October 10, 2012 · 7:10 am

David Cameron’s attempt to have it all ways on the EU is doomed to fail

As David Cameron makes yet more noise about Britain’s membership of the EU, you may wonder why he chose to use the word “consent”, a somewhat woolly concept, rather than going all guns blazing for a referendum.

One answer is that Cameron is increasingly finding himself between a rock and a hard place. As the FT’s Janan Ganesh puts it: “By hinting at a repatriation of powers, he (Cameron) raises eurosceptic hopes that are almost impossible to meet. Few diplomats expect to achieve more than cosmetic changes to the terms of British membership, and even those tweaks will take place largely in non-economic areas such as justice.”

One of the few British commentators to even begin to understand the EU, Ganesh is spot on with this analysis. Continuing in the same vein, he rightly says: “If such negotiations (on repatriating powers) ever transpire, the EU is likely to want to give Mr Cameron enough to have a fighting chance of winning a referendum to stay in the club. But the immemorial desire of most eurosceptics is nothing less than to belong to the single market while being excused much of the burden of European regulation. It is no more in the interests of the rest of the EU to grant this privilege now than it was in the past.”

An opt out on some justice and home affairs matters is all Cameron is ever going to get out of the EU, and even that is very uncertain. I, for one, have never understood why the majority of UK political commentators give house room to the concept of repatriation of powers from the EU to the UK. As the excellent Mr Ganesh has confirmed, except in a few specific, non-economic areas, it is impossibility.

Cameron is promising smoke and mirrors to appease the Tory right-wing and try and see off the threat to the Tories from UKIP. He is, however, deceiving the British people. This is, of course, dishonest. It’s also very stupid.

Janan Ganesh makes another strong point: “If the content of any new settlement will upset the right, the process of winning consent for it is also tricky. The Tory manifesto for the next election is increasingly likely to include a promise to hold a referendum on the new arrangements once they are secured. This should pacify eurosceptics for a while and prevent UKIP from encroaching too far into the Tory vote in 2015. But it will also ensure that the first couple of years of the next parliament will be dominated by Europe. The Conservatives could easily split as MPs decide that the deal struck by Mr Cameron is not worth campaigning for. Then, if the referendum is lost, it is hard to imagine the government surviving.”

Even supposing David Cameron is Prime Minister after 2015, and I most definitely do not believe that will be the case, it’s very difficult to see how his chosen policy on the European Union can be even modestly successful. The Tory eurosceptics are stridently demanding more than is even remotely realistic. Moreover, they scent blood and will not go away. Meanwhile David Cameron, one individual Prime Minister in a European Union of 27 member states, quite simply cannot give the sceptics what they want. To cap it all the British people are being promised a referendum on something which will probably never happen.

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