Europe, as everybody knows, is one of those issues on which a Tory leader needs to pay particular attention to the words he uses. This makes David Cameron’s behaviour in recent weeks all the odder.
First, we had that Brussels press conference in which Cameron sounded rather too enthusiastic about the EU for his own side’s tastes. This was followed by his Sunday Telegraph piece in which he stressed that ‘the two words “Europe” and “referendum” can go together’ for him.
Now, those close to Cameron complain that the two positions were perfectly compatible and that in the first instance he was quoted selectively. But given the importance that it is attached to anything he says about Europe, Cameron should have watched both what he was saying and the impression he was giving in that press conference.
Given this experience, it is all the more surprising that Cameron has ruled out ever campaigning for Britain to leave the EU in an interview with the Telegraph. He tells the paper that ‘If your vision of Britain was that we should just withdraw and become a sort of greater Switzerland, I think that would be a complete denial of our national interests’.
What makes this all the stranger is that Cameron didn’t have to answer this question. He could have instead stressed how he wants, as George Osborne put it to The Spectator a fortnight ago, ‘a better relationship with the rest of the European Union that the British people are comfortable with’. For the problem with ruling out ever leaving is that—as Paul Goodman said this morning — it undercuts your negotiating position. The rest of the EU is unlikely to offer Britain much if it thinks we’re staying in whatever happens.
It also makes it that much harder for Cameron to keep the peace in his own party on the subject.
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