sailingaway
09-26-2012, 04:51 PM
As one political figure who will be deeply involved in the campaign told me this week: “I am really looking forward to the fight. It is going to be huge.”
In fact it will be the most profound political decision this country will make for half a century or more.
I am told that the Prime Minister himself now acknowledges a referendum is coming down the track at breakneck pace and that it is hopeless to fight the logic of it. He just has a couple of technicalities to sort out: what the question that is put to the British people will be and on which side he will campaign.
Let me explain. Mr Cameron’s inclination has always been to stay pragmatic on the EU – to stay inside it but try to frustrate its tendency towards “ever-closer union”.
But this approach has failed.
In recent weeks a German-inspired plan to create a European government that controls economic policy at least for the 17 members of the eurozone (and probably for others besides) has been adopted wholesale by the European Commission.
Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has set out his ambition to finalise the new arrangements by the end of next year.
Old treaties will have to be amended and new ones signed.
Several EU countries will put the deal to a referendum. Nobody will bother denying any longer the claims of British Eurosceptics of a dark plot to create a “United States of Europe”.
Those ambitions will be out in the open. Britain will not be a part of it. But the transformation of most of the EU
into a superstate will have massive implications for us. Now Cameron could try and say that since no powers
are directly passing from Britain to Brussels there is no need for a referendum here.
But I am told that he has realised the politics of such a stance are hopeless: he would be accused of betrayal, many more of his grassroots activists would defect to UKIP, his party would be smashed in the European Parliamentary elections of spring 2014, Tory MPs would agitate for Boris Johnson to be brought into replace him and – probably
worst of all - he would be likened to Edward Heath.
Given all the other problems he faces on the economy and living this “new deal” and leaving. In such circumstances he will campaign for Britain to stay formally inside the EU but outside the new superstate.
On the other hand, if the powers Brussels is prepared to return are so paltry that he cannot credibly claim they amount to a new deal and the Tory tribe is in uproar, he will tell the British people that it is time to settle terms for a divorce.
In these dramatic circumstances, despite what he has said in the past about never leaving, David Cameron will lead a campaign for Britain to cease to be a member of the EU.
Such a move would electrify politics – reuniting those of a Eurosceptic persuasion and forcing Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg to swim against the tide of public opinion.
A Cameron referendum victory would leave the Labour and Lib Dem leaderships broken just months before a
general election. Cameron would appear a giant and could then hammer home his advantage by making a revamping of our relations with the European Court of Human Rights a centrepiece of the 2015 general election campaign.
The economics of the euro’s collapse have gone into slow motion because there is so much political will to keep it alive on the continent that nations are even willing to dissolve themselves to do so. But as a consequence the politics of Britain’s relationship with Europe have been switched to fast-forward.
Hold on to your hats. The new battle for Britain is just around the corner. And if David Cameron has not yet worked out which side he is on then most of the rest of us have.
http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/347594
In fact it will be the most profound political decision this country will make for half a century or more.
I am told that the Prime Minister himself now acknowledges a referendum is coming down the track at breakneck pace and that it is hopeless to fight the logic of it. He just has a couple of technicalities to sort out: what the question that is put to the British people will be and on which side he will campaign.
Let me explain. Mr Cameron’s inclination has always been to stay pragmatic on the EU – to stay inside it but try to frustrate its tendency towards “ever-closer union”.
But this approach has failed.
In recent weeks a German-inspired plan to create a European government that controls economic policy at least for the 17 members of the eurozone (and probably for others besides) has been adopted wholesale by the European Commission.
Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has set out his ambition to finalise the new arrangements by the end of next year.
Old treaties will have to be amended and new ones signed.
Several EU countries will put the deal to a referendum. Nobody will bother denying any longer the claims of British Eurosceptics of a dark plot to create a “United States of Europe”.
Those ambitions will be out in the open. Britain will not be a part of it. But the transformation of most of the EU
into a superstate will have massive implications for us. Now Cameron could try and say that since no powers
are directly passing from Britain to Brussels there is no need for a referendum here.
But I am told that he has realised the politics of such a stance are hopeless: he would be accused of betrayal, many more of his grassroots activists would defect to UKIP, his party would be smashed in the European Parliamentary elections of spring 2014, Tory MPs would agitate for Boris Johnson to be brought into replace him and – probably
worst of all - he would be likened to Edward Heath.
Given all the other problems he faces on the economy and living this “new deal” and leaving. In such circumstances he will campaign for Britain to stay formally inside the EU but outside the new superstate.
On the other hand, if the powers Brussels is prepared to return are so paltry that he cannot credibly claim they amount to a new deal and the Tory tribe is in uproar, he will tell the British people that it is time to settle terms for a divorce.
In these dramatic circumstances, despite what he has said in the past about never leaving, David Cameron will lead a campaign for Britain to cease to be a member of the EU.
Such a move would electrify politics – reuniting those of a Eurosceptic persuasion and forcing Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg to swim against the tide of public opinion.
A Cameron referendum victory would leave the Labour and Lib Dem leaderships broken just months before a
general election. Cameron would appear a giant and could then hammer home his advantage by making a revamping of our relations with the European Court of Human Rights a centrepiece of the 2015 general election campaign.
The economics of the euro’s collapse have gone into slow motion because there is so much political will to keep it alive on the continent that nations are even willing to dissolve themselves to do so. But as a consequence the politics of Britain’s relationship with Europe have been switched to fast-forward.
Hold on to your hats. The new battle for Britain is just around the corner. And if David Cameron has not yet worked out which side he is on then most of the rest of us have.
http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/347594