The next project for eurosceptic Tory MPs is to get a free vote for government ministers on the EU referendum. They want David Cameron to tell his frontbenchers whether or not they can campaign for a different stance to the one he’ll take (even if he wants to give the impression he might advocate leaving or remaining), and they want him to do it at the Tory conference in a few weeks’ time.
One of the reasons the eurosceptics want this is that it will make it easier for them to add the names of senior ministers to their lists of supporters of leaving the EU, and to do so as early as possible in order to build momentum for their campaign.
But what’s interesting is that I understand there is a great deal of apathy among a number of the eurosceptic members of the Cabinet, both for a free vote and for sticking their heads above the parapet any time soon. Cabinet ministers believe that the campaign to leave the EU is looking pretty behind at the moment and that the list of supporters published is ‘a bit old school’, to the extent that they don’t think it would be strategically clever to be associated with it. They currently believe ‘Out’ is going to lose, and no-one ambitious wants to be associated with a losing side. There’s also a calculation to be made about George Osborne here, which is that causing trouble in Cabinet is a sure-fire way of encouraging the Chancellor to try to knock your block off in one way or another.
This calculation could well be wrong, though. We don’t yet know the date of the referendum, though many Secretaries of State are now working on the assumption that it will be November 2016, and we don’t know what the renegotiation will result in. So the ‘Out’ cause could grow in popularity, and it could sign up big, respected names outside of politics to boost its appeal, too. But there isn’t much internal Cabinet agitation for freedom to speak out on whether Britain should stay or go just yet.
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