David Cameron faces MPs today after returning from Brussels with his European Union reform deal. At 3.30 in the Commons, the Prime Minister will give a statement on the outcome of the European Council meeting, and take questions from MPs, including many on his own side who think the deal is a load of tosh. It will be interesting to see how many of them choose to tell him that, and what sort of language they use.
There is a risk that this referendum campaign becomes very personal and furious, even while everyone involved is pontificating about the importance of the Tory party getting along well after the vote. Ministers – who will not be able to offer their views in the Commons – have been making clear in the media over the past few days their desire for a Brexit, and some of them, including John Whittingdale, Chris Grayling and Priti Patel have respectfully suggested that the renegotiation hasn’t brought back very much at all. Whittingdale goes the furthest of all, telling the Sun today that he raised his own concerns with Cameron about the quality of the renegotiation. He says:
‘I had my own discussions with the Prime Minister and made it clear I wanted the renegotiation to go much further.
‘It doesn’t go as far as even he initially wanted.’
Cameron clearly knows that today is going to be tricky, which is why he sent the ever-helpful Michael Fallon onto the Today programme to do his usual firefighting routine. He will want to move on from talking about the deal itself to talking about Britain’s overall EU membership. But this will not stop the sniping between Conservatives. Many have been suggesting that decisions taken by their colleagues to support one camp or another have been motivated by personal ambition, not principle. While no-one, if they’re honest with themselves, can really claim their motives for doing anything are 100 per cent pure, that sort of insult to another MP’s integrity is not something that will be forgiven particularly quickly. It may be the low-level snippery of this campaign that wounds the party the most, not big set piece rows.
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