This story broke as an exclusive in tonight’s Coffee House Evening Blend, a free round-up and analysis of the day’s political stories. Click here to subscribe.
The Conservatives will table James Wharton’s Private Member’s Bill for an EU referendum tonight for publication tomorrow. Coffee House has exclusive details of the changes to this piece of legislation, and a clever new plan by the party to make the most of this backbench bill as possible.
The bill has been amended following extensive talks between Wharton and Conservative backbenchers about its wording. It now includes a requirement for the Secretary of State to announce the date of the referendum by the end of 2016. This will mean that any reluctant future government cannot wriggle out of organising the 2017 referendum by failing to announce the date and subsuming itself in legal wrangling. Other changes include the wording of the question and a tightening of the discretion for the Secretary of State.
These are all designed to ensure that there as few attempts to amend the legislation as possible, which Tory sources hope will in turn ensure the safe passage of the bill. The extensive consultation in advance of this legislation being tabled also demonstrates a desire to keep the party united on this issue, and to make backbenchers feel loved by the leadership.
The list of co-sponsors has also changed from that briefed over the weekend. For technical reasons, the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary cannot appear as co-sponsors, and have been replaced by Bill Cash and Stephen Dorrell, which is an attempt to underline the support for the legislation from across the Conservative Party. The DUP’s Nigel Dodds has also been added to the list, which the Tories hope will help with the numbers when it does come to a vote.
But their absence from the list is an early sign of the troubles the bill faces, as it is indicative of the constitutional complications of a private member’s bill. And the co-sponsors will also find any subsequent criticisms they make of the legislation have greater authority simply because of their inclusion on the list.
And the party is also unveiling a clever trick tonight: members of the public will be allowed to become ‘co-sponsors’ of this Bill via the LetBritainDecide website. It will be on that site that Cameron and Hague will also pledge their support.
This has been an impressive campaign from the party leadership both to present a united front on the bill and to market the legislation aggressively to voters. The website and the sheer volume of Tory MPs prepared to sell it in the media and online is part of an impressive effort from the party to make the very most of the bill at every stage. It is a strategy the Conservatives should replicate at every opportunity from now on.
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