TWENTY-ONE
April 2012–February 2013
On 23 January 2013, David Cameron delivers a speech on the European Union at the Bloomberg offices in London. His Private Office reckon it is the most significant foreign policy speech of his five years in power. Janan Ganesh of the Financial Times later calls it ‘the most important speech by a British prime minister since Tony Blair’s case for war in Iraq’.1
It is not a speech Cameron had wanted to make. He had entered 2012 on the back of his EU veto, still hoping Europe would be no more than a marginal distraction in his premiership. But pressure has piled up on him from all sides to make some kind of defining statement of his thinking. Cabinet ministers have become impatient with the EU once they grapple with the reality of its impact on their departments, and the Conservative Party has become more Eurosceptic by the month. Even Cameron feels angry that the advice he received before the election – that there would be no major treaty change in the next five years – has turned out to be wrong. Spurred on by the eurozone crisis, the EU has an ever greater appetite for stronger powers at the centre. The Lisbon Treaty, over which Cameron declined to hold a ‘promised’ referendum, turns out to have been more federalist than he had feared. The result, as Matthew d’Ancona puts it, is that ‘it has become increasingly clear to many ministers that if Britain is to remain a member of the EU, significant powers must be repatriated’.2
Within Number 10, Cameron’s aides have been on a long journey since he came to power in May 2010. As Major’s team found in the 1990s, the EU arouses deep feelings among Tory MPs that cannot be contained. Both Cameron and Osborne are profoundly irritated by their Eurosceptic MPs, but Osborne is even more pragmatic than Cameron. ‘George worried whether it was sensible politics to talk about disengaging from major international institutions in the twenty-first century,’ says one close to them. ‘He was worried not only about the effect on the party but also the reaction of the business community leading up to any referendum.’ Osborne’s eye is on a further horizon than Cameron’s: his own leadership succession. Business opinion weighs heavily on him, and he ‘is loath to make the Conservative Party appear the riskier proposition to business than Labour’. Cameron, however, is more willing to engage with the Eurosceptics and see if he can accommodate them. He relies particularly on Ed Llewellyn over Europe. His chief of staff is at his most influential on this topic. Llewellyn has deep contacts in the Foreign Office, on the EU ambassador network, and with Foreign Secretary William Hague, who is himself at the pragmatic end of Eurosceptic opinion. Llewellyn is bringing Cameron round to realise that a reformed EU, with Britain playing its part within it, is a serious possibility. Cameron must always heed Nick Clegg, who is not keen on a referendum. The ‘referendum lock’ policy in the Coalition Agreement is crystal clear, as Clegg reminds Cameron regularly: a referendum would only be triggered if new powers are to be transferred to Brussels.3 It would be strategically disastrous for Cameron to agree to a pre-emptive referendum, as it would force him into a position where he was either in the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ camp.
By spring 2012, the pressure for Cameron to commit to a referendum is becoming virtually unstoppable. Hague was the first to argue for it: even in Opposition he’d said that it was inevitable that one would have to be held before long. Initially reluctant, Osborne is coming round to see the case. The longer Cameron delays an announcement, the more it will appear that he is being bounced into one, and he will lose all advantage. There are particular fears about the 2014 European elections, with the likelihood growing that the party will poll less than UKIP (as indeed proves to be the case). The time has come for a decision. The improbable location of a pizza restaurant at Chicago’s O’Hare airport is the location. It is 21 May and on their return from a NATO summit, Cameron sits down with Hague and Llewellyn to talk. Before going to the country Cameron and his senior ministers must first reform relations with EU partners. They agree to offer a referendum in the middle of the next parliament, i.e. before the end of 2017. They discuss a later date, but 2017 is already five years distant; any longer might not seem credible. Their deliberations remain top secret.
On 29 June at the EU Council, Cameron blocks moves to extend the eurozone banking union across the EU, successfully resisting plans to allow a single supervisor to oversee banks.4 He secures a further agreement that the single market will not be undermined by any new governance arrangements for the eurozone. Number 10 brands the Council ‘one of the PM’s greatest negotiating triumphs’.5 At the press conference, Cameron places himself on a collision course with his Eurosceptic MPs when he rejects out of hand an immediate in/out referendum and mounts a passionate defence of Britain’s membership of the EU. The outcry is so great that he is bounced into writing an article in the Sunday Telegraph on 1 July, in which he drops a heavy hint that a referendum might be needed one day.6 The article – headed ‘We need to be clear about the best way for getting what is best for Britain’ – is, in truth, anything but clear. Number 10 has an agonised weekend, besieged by messages from those on both sides of the debate.
A large section of the parliamentary party has lost whatever trust it might once have had in Cameron over Europe. Only their pressure, they believe, will push him into action. On 27 June, backbencher John Baron delivers a letter to Number 10 signed by a hundred MPs calling for legislation to ensure that a referendum on the future of Britain’s membership of the EU will be held during the next parliament. It states brazenly that only ‘a commitment on the statute book to hold such a referendum would address the very real lack of public trust when people hear politicians making promises’.7 Cameron’s team smart when they read it, knowing that the letter is attacking the PM for abandoning his ‘cast-iron guarantee’ on Lisbon. Cameron agrees to see Baron on 9 July. He listens to him as politely as he can, before concluding he wants to give himself time before making a response. On 18 September, he writes to Baron to say that ‘the EU is currently undergoing radical and fundamental change’, he wants ‘less Europe not more Europe’, but that it would be quite wrong to hold a referendum before exploring fully what concessions and reforms might be negotiated from the EU. Any question of gaining ‘fresh consent of the British people’ through a referendum should thus be delayed until clarity is reached on new arrangements between Britain and the EU.8
Just before the summer recess, a critical meeting had taken place with Cameron, Osborne, Hague and Llewellyn in the PM’s office. Osborne still has reservations over holding a referendum. They are now joined in September by Letwin. He and Osborne are at opposite ends of the spectrum, but it is clear that a speech announcing a referendum will have to be made before the end of the year. Cameron’s position is desperately weak. He cannot hold out much longer.
Meanwhile, backbenchers are not remotely reassured by Cameron’s reply to Baron. Angered by the brush-off, they resolve to bide their time until they can make their feelings known and damage Cameron. They humiliate him in a parliamentary vote on the EU budget at the end of October. Fifty-three Conservative MPs, including the usual suspects – Douglas Carswell, Bill Cash, Bernard Jenkin, Mark Reckless and David Davis – join with Labour to pass an amendment calling for Cameron to impose a real-terms cut in the EU budget between 2014 and 2020.9 The BBC reports that it is ‘the most [significant] defeat since the coalition came to power’, and a ‘blow to David Cameron’s authority’.10 Number 10 had mounted a massive whipping operation to prevent MPs from voting against the government. Cameron spent an hour with Graham Brady, trying to persuade him to bring his troops into line. Brady himself abstained, but believes the fact that Cameron goes on to secure a budget reduction shows how influential the rebels and critics are. Number 10 is incandescent at the result, finding it ‘staggering that the defeat becomes yet another story about the Conservative Party at war with itself’. The lesson they draw is to be very careful about ever bringing another European issue to a vote in Parliament. The seemingly unstoppable rise of UKIP also remains a major concern for Conservative MPs. By the autumn of 2012, UKIP is consistently polling around 10% in opinion polls.
Speechwriting begins in great secrecy in early November. The aim is for Cameron to deliver it at the end of the month, but it is postponed until 18 January the following year because of the EU Council. It is then changed again because of the fiftieth anniversary of the Elysée Treaty which will take place on 22 January, with major celebrations in Berlin and Paris; it is then postponed because of the hostage crisis in Algeria of 16–19 January. Cameron has to remain in London to oversee COBRA meetings and co-ordinate Britain’s response. British nationals are among the forty civilians killed when the crisis reaches a bloody conclusion. The morning of 23 January is hurriedly chosen for the speech because it falls between the Elysée celebrations on the 22nd and the start of the four-day World Economic Forum in Davos which Cameron has to travel to later in the day on the 23rd.
Where should he deliver the speech? The location had been the subject of diplomatic angst for several weeks. Brief consideration is given to Berlin and Brussels. But then the team alighted on the Chamber of Commerce in Amsterdam: the Dutch have a similar outlook on the EU to the British, Mark Rutte is very open to reform, and the hall itself has long been associated with free commerce. All was set until the hostage crisis dictated a move to London, and then the Elysée Treaty celebrations which forced a change in the date. A scramble was on to find a venue: Bloomberg’s modern office building in the heart of the City of London was available and happy to host.
No speech by Cameron has been more anticipated. Llewellyn, the chief speechwriter, is aware that it has to succeed with three different audiences. Firstly, Eurosceptics in the Tory Party, who need convincing that this will be the first serious attempt since the referendum on membership in 1975 to establish popular consent for the EU. Secondly, the business community: extensive conversations take place with the CBI and groups of business people (which result in a supportive letter to The Times on 24 January, the day after the speech). Getting business onside is crucial for the Conservatives politically. Finally, Cameron has to convince key EU leaders that the speech is not just a cynical ploy to help him out of personal difficulties with his party, but a sincere and credible contribution to the European debate. ‘He had to develop a narrative on why Britain should stay in the EU,’ says one senior official. ‘He began thinking through the speech with one thing in mind: “If I am ever to persuade the public of remaining in, how do I convince them?”’ Merkel is the key. Without her support, the announcement could be a fiasco.
Wooing Merkel is a major preoccupation on a flight back from the Gulf on 7 November. She is coming to a private dinner in Number 10 that evening. Cameron has an idea: ‘Why don’t we show her a PowerPoint and give some of it in German?’ The team likes the idea: it is a way of engaging her and injecting humour and informality. Further conversations take place with the team back in Downing Street. Hurriedly a presentation is cobbled together, including pictures of Cameron and Merkel hugging. The two topics for their discussion are Cameron’s impending speech, and the EU budget negotiations which are then in full swing. It is decided that the PowerPoint presentation should stick to the technicalities of the EU budget, before moving onto a more wide-ranging conversation. He greets her at the front door and shows her up to the Pillared Room where they have a drink, and then he shows her through the double doors into the Small Dining Room. They sit opposite each other at the table as she is taken through the presentation partly in German on the screen.
Cameron begins by describing his own Euroscepticism, and how he feels the British public don’t give him the benefit of the doubt over Europe. She asks why frustration with the EU has got so high.
He provides two responses: ‘First, the single currency was key because it changed everything, and this is exacerbated by the eurozone crisis that Britain is watching from the margins. You are in the midst of a huge existential crisis which we are not part of.’ He tells her that the single currency has thrust itself forward as the most important European project to the detriment of the member states outside the eurozone. As a consequence, the single market has been neglected. He finishes by asking her: ‘What is most important to you – the single market or the single currency?’11 She looks at him and listens intently to every word, attempting to understand what he is saying. At European Councils, she has a habit of studying her fellow leaders very closely, trying to get inside their heads to decide whether or not they are serious. She is reserving judgement on Cameron. Secondly, he tells her, ‘The British people never got a choice to vote on Lisbon. It spread much unhappiness towards the political establishment.’
Interrupting him, she asks whether he wants to stay in the EU.
‘Like many in my party, I’ve supported our membership of the EU all my political life, but I am worried that if I don’t get the reform objectives I’m setting out, I won’t be able to keep Britain in. I am passionate about the single market, I am passionate about foreign policy co-operation, but if I don’t listen to British public opinion, then Britain will depart from Europe. The European project was mis-sold here, so what I want are changes that will make it possible for Britain to stay in.’ Aides listening to the conversation have never heard him give a clearer definition of his European politics.
The genie is out of the bottle, she replies, implying that antipathy has been allowed to grow in Britain in a way that she wouldn’t have allowed in her own country. Cameron returns to the way the country felt betrayed by the political class over the Lisbon volte-face. She doesn’t fully understand: why has the political class betrayed the people?
‘I have a problem with my party,’ he replies, ‘even though elements in the Conservative Party are more pro-Europe than the country, which is even more sceptical.’ He insists the problem is deeper than placating his Eurosceptic backbenchers. It goes to ‘the very heart of the British understanding of democracy’.12
She probes him about sentiment in the business community. Surely some of them are pro-EU, she asks, insisting that both countries can rally round an agenda of greater competition. They clearly strike common ground here.
Cameron goes on: ‘But the more I fight for competitiveness in the EU, the more I feel you are leaving me to do it on my own when it is exactly what you want. I find it very frustrating.’
She is staring very hard at him. If Britain leaves the EU, or if it leaves Britain behind, she tells him, Europe will be lost. ‘Without you, I don’t know what is going to happen.’ They then turn to his veto in the EU the previous December. She knows why it made him a fleeting ‘hero’ in the eyes of the country.
‘That was a side benefit, not a deliberate choice,’ he responds. He wants her to realise that he had not set out with the veto in mind. ‘I came to see you in Berlin to try to get a deal with you.’ She tells him that he was too forceful, too certain – making the most of the disagreement. He says that is the British style. Other cultures in the EU do things differently, she says, but he replies that to be forceful is very British. Perplexed, she refuses to accept any pride in being controversial. She is genuinely fascinated by the way his mind works; but she still doesn’t think he’s right. Why can’t he create more space to retreat and compromise, like her? She tells him about her own statecraft: by asking for less at the beginning, she gives herself more flexibility and keeps her options open. After discussing Israel, Libya, Iran and Greece, they return to the main point. She will try her utmost to keep him on board, she concludes, warning him not to rush into saying ‘I’m leaving the ship.’
‘No,’ says Cameron, ‘this is our EU as much as anyone’s. Therefore I have to be pushy for our interests; but I don’t want Britain to leave.’
It is the frankest conversation they have ever had about Europe. She offers him advice on talking to the northern states, to the Bulgarians and to Poland. They need to understand what he is doing, she insists. If he is seen as just a wrecker, it will be hopeless. He wants to find a way for Britain to stay in. If he goes into the Council and makes it ‘Britain vs The Rest’ it will become self-fulfilling, she warns starkly.
He becomes defensive at this point. ‘I don’t accept that we just turn up at the Council to be difficult; we put lots of initiatives on the table,’ he replies, listing examples. He returns to his central theme, using his full emotional force with her: ‘I need to make a pitch to the country. If there is no acceptable deal, it’s not the end of the world; I’ll walk away from the EU.’
Now the chancellor draws on her psychological arsenal: as an older woman, she tells him, it is difficult to know whether she regrets him being so decisive, or to admire it. It can be very helpful to have some friends in the room, she says.
He pauses and reminds her of his difficulties in Parliament: ‘I lost a vote in Parliament and it was humiliating,’ he says, referring to the vote over the EU budget two months earlier.
She is intrigued how the parliamentary system works. What happened to the Conservative MPs who voted against him, she asks.
A senior aide comes in at this point and talks about those Tory MPs who never accepted his leadership and want to destroy him, regardless of the consequences. But the great majority of Conservative MPs are not like that: ‘It’s just that they’re terrified of their constituency associations.’
‘I won’t break promises that I made on development spending and universal benefits for pensioners, even when so many in my party want me to break them,’ Cameron tells her. He wants to take the poison out of the EU issue.
She knows he wants a deal. ‘I do get it.’ If she can be certain of that, she will try to find a way through for him. She adds that although she will try and help, there are limits to what she can do, given Germany’s multilateral relationships in Europe – a caveat remembered more in Berlin than in London.
The dinner is a turning point in Cameron’s relationship with Merkel. She has some sympathy for his argument that the Common Market Britain joined in 1973, and voted to remain a part of in the 1975 referendum, was a very different entity from what it had now become. She leaves Number 10 with a much clearer understanding of how the British public might have felt cheated, especially when denied a referendum on Lisbon.
Llewellyn returns to writing the speech soon after the Merkel dinner, spending several weeks on it with John Casson, Cameron’s foreign affairs private secretary. Cameron, in parallel, holds a series of talks with Cabinet ministers, including Theresa May, Philip Hammond, Iain Duncan Smith and Ken Clarke, taking them into his confidence to bring them onside. Clarke is the most tricky: ‘I am totally against referendums,’ he says. He is ‘horrified’ that Cameron was contemplating holding one. Although in ‘resigning mood’, he falls short of threatening to resign. Cameron tells him: ‘We can’t get away without having one. We can have the argument during the referendum itself, and it will allow us to get on with governing.’13 Clarke is gratified to hear Cameron say the intention is to reform the EU, completing the single market in services, and having more deregulation. Cameron focuses intently on his own party. He knows that the threat of withdrawal is necessary not just to focus minds in Brussels, but to gain credibility with his backbenchers. He spends time talking to Graham Brady, who says he is pleased that his ‘suggestions are taken on board’, and that it is a speech with which most Conservative Eurosceptics could live.14
Cameron then turns his attention to winning over key EU leaders. He holds long conversations with Frederik Reinfeldt of Sweden, Mark Rutte of Holland, Mario Monti of Italy, and François Hollande of France, who is the most difficult. Merkel’s advice is to ‘make it a European argument, and not just an argument about Britain’. The Private Office carefully notes their concerns, and Llewellyn rewrites the speech over Christmas, partly in London and partly in Paris. When he shows it to Cameron in the New Year, Cameron says, ‘I want to give it now.’ He doesn’t want to see the speech again, and is quite detached from it, which is unusual, as he often tinkers with major speeches. But he thinks that Llewellyn has got the core argument right and is happy to trust his judgement. Security around the text is unusually tight because of the fear of leaks, not least by the Foreign Office. Simon Fraser, the acute permanent secretary, comes across the road into Number 10 a few days before delivery to look it over.
Finally, the text is ready. On the morning of 23 January, Cameron speeds across London to the modern Bloomberg building on Finsbury Square, and at 8.10 delivers the speech in front of a video wall. ‘Seventy years ago, Europe was being torn apart by its second catastrophic conflict in a generation … And millions dead across the world in the battle for peace and liberty. For us, the European Union is a means to an end – prosperity, stability, the anchor of freedom and democracy both within Europe and beyond her shores – not an end in itself … I never want us to pull up the drawbridge and retreat from the world. I am not a British isolationist. I don’t just want a better deal for Britain. I want a better deal for Europe too.’ The speech is one of the most pro-EU speeches given by a British prime minister for some time. The next Conservative manifesto, he says, will ask for a mandate to negotiate a new settlement with the EU, and once it has been negotiated, he will give the British people an in/out referendum.
The team are more than usually anxious about how the speech will be received. Having delayed it for so long, the concern is there would be nothing fresh to say, given the extensive trailing of the referendum announcement. ‘My worry was that it would be an anti-climax, but it wasn’t,’ says a senior aide, ‘we were very pleased by the way it landed.’15 Cameron too is delighted: ‘It got us ahead of the debate in the country, and the debate in Europe,’ he says.16 Expectation management had been pitch perfect: ‘Many of the key parties expected it to be worse than it was,’ says one insider.
The speech is so early in the morning because later that day Cameron has PMQs in the Commons. As he enters the chamber, he is cheered to the rafters by his backbenchers. ‘The reason that those on the Conservative back benches are cheering is not that they want to vote yes in an in/out referendum; it is because they want to vote no,’ booms Ed Miliband. ‘Can he name one thing – just one thing – which, if he does not get it, he will recommend leaving the European Union? … Why can he not say unequivocally that he will vote yes in a referendum? Because he is frightened, because of those on the Conservative back benches.’17 Cameron gives Miliband as good as he gets. ‘He needs to go away, get a policy, come back and tell us what it is. In the meantime, our approach is what the British people want. It is right for business, it is right for our economy, and we will fight for it in the years ahead.’18
Cameron then flies to Davos, which is useful because he can speak to his fellow EU leaders individually to explain what he is trying to say. The extensive prior lobbying has helped the speech’s positive reception in Berlin and across the EU. There is widespread, if not universal, agreement amongst EU leaders that there needs to be a reform agenda, including competition and subsidiarity. To gain wider support, Cameron enlists the support of John Major. He knows that the last Conservative prime minister had been treated very badly by his predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, and that it stung.19 Attacks from Thatcherites have not prevented Major becoming admired across the party. Cameron had consulted Major before the Bloomberg speech, and Major wants to know how he can help now that it has been delivered. It is arranged that Major should talk about it on 14 February at Chatham House, where he says: ‘I don’t like referenda in a parliamentary system, but this referendum could heal many old sores and have a cleansing effect on politics … We need a renegotiation, and a referendum endorsement of it. And if that is denied, the clamour for it will only grow.’20
After Bloomberg, the EU budget remains unfinished business. The EU had been volatile during 2012, with feelings towards Britain still raw after the December 2011 EU veto, and with uncertainty about what Hollande’s succession of Sarkozy in May would mean for France’s relationship with Germany, and its impact on the EU. As the focus of interest shifted to whether the Merkel/Hollande relationship would build on the Merkel/Sarkozy partnership, the heat was taken off Britain. Below the radar, Britain put great focus on securing safeguards for the City of London, and EU lead diplomat Ivan Rogers spent six months travelling around EU capitals doing his best to negotiate a deal by December.
The seven-year budget, known as the Multiannual Financial Framework, became a major focus towards the end of 2012. In November, EU member states are not ready to settle. The budget is a big topic for Merkel and Cameron at their Downing Street dinner on 7 November. Merkel and her European adviser, Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut, are irritated that the Treasury has spoken in public about the real-term freeze of €886 million over seven years which Cameron is hoping to secure. Cameron knows Merkel is cross about it but nevertheless decides to present the figures to her.
‘Why did you put this number out there?’ she exclaims, adding that it left very little room for negotiation. Why does he always do this, she complains; there is no flexibility at all.
‘Parliament has the ability to vote down parts of it,’ he tells her.
Everyone will go to the barricades, if that is his position, she replies. She tries again to convince him to take a more flexible stance. She then suggests it would be easier for him to veto the whole deal.
Now it is his turn to be direct. ‘I’ll block it if I have to,’ he says, ‘but I am not afraid to negotiate, nor for coming back for annual budgets. But I am not blocking it for the sake of blocking it.’
There are twenty-five others in the European Union that she has to get on board, she replies, exasperated now.
He talks to her about Plan A and austerity in the UK, and how the electorate can’t understand why the EU is increasing its budget at the very time that they have to face spending cuts in welfare, defence and health.
She is unmoved by his pleas. How can it be that you keep putting yourself up as our opponent and we all hate you and isolate you, she says. Why can’t he make any tactical shifts, just as Germany has had to make? She tells him that they have to work together to find a coalition of support. ‘There is a chance that we can do this. But it is not a given.’ She tells him that if Germany is seen as too closely identified with Britain, then everything will be lost. She worries that Britain is the EU’s ‘problem child’ and asks him to work with her to mitigate this perception. She asks him to talk to the likes of the Dutch and Swedes, and to make more effort with Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland. They discuss budget numbers that Cameron thinks he might be able to live with. ‘Can you make an effort to reach out to your friends?’ she asks.
Cameron decides to capitalise on Hollande’s attempt to work with the Italians to block the deal, which is alienating Merkel. At the conclusion of the Council on 8 February, after twenty-six hours of negotiation, Cameron secures a cut of 3.3% (€32 billion) in the seven-year European budget. The pleas of Hollande to relax austerity and increase spending are swept aside. Cameron achieves some of the best headlines on Europe for a British prime minister for many years. The Daily Telegraph describes the result as a ‘victory’ for Cameron, while the Guardian calls the deal ‘historic’.21
Alas, his early successes in 2013 do not herald a new era of harmony with the Conservative Party. Hardened Eurosceptics have little confidence in his Bloomberg pledge on the referendum and pressure him to bring forward legislation for an in/out referendum into the present parliament. They want legislation on a referendum included in the Queen’s Speech. Knowing that Clegg will not countenance such a proposition and preferring to have the legislation in the next parliament, Cameron declines. The Conservative MPs nevertheless draft a bill for a referendum by the end of 2017. Number 10 is in a flat spin, uncertain how to react. They hoped Bloomberg would substantially close down Eurosceptic rumbling. Cabinet is divided, and nerves are further rattled when Michael Gove, never totally reliable in the eyes of Number 10, says in public that he might vote to leave the EU in the referendum, suggesting that Number 10 is losing control over Cabinet and that it is open season for Cabinet ministers to express their views on the EU freely.22 For avowed Eurosceptics like Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, Bloomberg ‘was an important step, because it delivered a chance to have a vote, but more importantly for me it provided an opportunity to discuss restoring our trading relationship with the rest of the world and our ability to make our own laws in Parliament’.23 Here there is consensus with Europhiles like Ken Clarke, who welcomed what was a ‘very pro-European speech’. ‘From the moment he announced it, all the hard-line Eurosceptics have been putting pressure on him to bring forward subjects like the free movement of people which they know he can’t negotiate. Unfortunately, he has made UKIP, though I know David thinks the reverse. Nigel Farage was a fringe player until David Cameron announced a referendum.’24
Things get worse when on 7 May 2013 former Chancellor Lord Lawson calls for an exit from the EU in an article in The Times. He dismisses any concessions that Cameron might be able to win from Brussels as ‘inconsequential’.25 Eight days later, 114 Conservative MPs vote for an amendment expressing ‘regret’ that the referendum bill was not in the Queen’s Speech.26 Cameron is on a trip to the US and so is not at the debate, which goes down badly with his party. A private member’s bill is introduced by James Wharton, calling for a referendum by 2017. With begrudging senior Conservative support, it passes the Commons by 304 votes to zero after Labour and the Lib Dems abstain, but fails to pass through the Lords, and an attempt to revive it in 2014 is unsuccessful.27 In November 2013, Conservative MP Adam Afriyie introduces an amendment calling for an EU referendum before the next election. A new poll suggests that around a third of Conservative Party members support an early referendum on the EU.28 MPs vote against the amendment by 249 to fifteen.
Cameron is confident that he can charm his fellow EU leaders and secure a deal to put before the British electorate. But as 2013 moves into 2014, he becomes progressively more Eurosceptic. His three objectives – to pacify Eurosceptic critics, neutralise UKIP, and take the EU off the front pages – are all under heavy pressure. Whatever successes he may have in Europe, and however hard he tries to hold his party together, he never seems to satisfy his Eurosceptic MPs. His leadership remains under strain. And life is about to get much worse.