In this morning’s Independent, a collection of Establishment names have broken cover and lobbied David Cameron to abandon his pledge to hold an EU referendum by the end of 2017. In a letter, whose signatories include former Tory Ministers, the CBI and Peter Mandelson, they bizarrely claim that the lesson from the Scottish referendum is that people should not be given a vote on the EU, for fear of creating ‘uncertainty’.
The motivation of many of the signatories’ opposition to a referendum should not come as a surprise. Many are either former employees of the European Union or have in the past urged the UK to join the Euro – a currency that has doomed many of Europe’s economies to stagnation and crippling youth unemployment. They were wrong then, they are wrong now, and their justifications for denying the people a vote are spurious.
The in-at-all-costs brigade appear willing to only pay lip service to the idea of EU reform.
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