It’s eurosceptic party-time in Westminster today. Finally, the time has come for the Conservatives to show that they are the only ones who will #letbritaindecide. When I arrived in Parliament this morning, I was half-expecting a brass band and bunting to celebrate the momentous occasion of the second reading of James Wharton’s Private Member’s Bill, so excited are Tory MPs. But instead, CCHQ has placed digital posters at a number of sites across London, including the Vauxhall roundabout.
You could be forgiven for thinking that the general election is this year, not 2015.
The Bill is highly likely to pass its second reading, and the chances are that the Tories will press for a division just to make the point that only they are backing the right of the British people to have a say on Europe. A handful of Labour MPs would then troop through the lobbies with them. Today will be a jubilant day for the party, which continues to bounce along in a terribly good mood.
But just one note of caution: there is something eurosceptic MPs are very worried about. They suspect that Labour may try to table amendments to the Bill to bring the referendum date forward from 2017. This would be significant for the Labour party, of course, but it would send the party into uproar. All of that unity, all of that flag-waving, all those #letbritaindecide tweets will go sloshing down the plughole to be replaced by infighting between eurosceptic factions of the party (who were already starting to bicker in a pretty dangerous fashion around the time of John Baron’s Queen’s Speech vote) on a scale thus far unseen. The Tory party would eat itself on Europe.
Would Labour do that? Well, Ed Miliband has a few other domestic problems to keep him occupied at the moment. But Ian Austin’s op-ed in his local paper arguing that he wanted an earlier referendum is an interesting frontbench intervention. If the party does decide it wants a referendum, it has the potential to inflict terrible damage on the Conservatives with the right tactics.
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