David Cameron is in Holland and France today trying to pave the way for the renegotiation of the terms of Britain’s EU membership. Number 10 believe that now the referendum is definitely happening, the bill for it was published today, they can get other countries to engage with Cameron’s concerns.
As I say in the column this week, Cameron’s renegotiation strategy has become clearer in recent weeks. Rather than trying to address every concern about EU membership, he is – as one Cabinet Minister told me – going to ‘focus on three or four big things and make a really big push on them.’
The fact that Iain Duncan Smith and Sajid Javid have been put on the Cabinet committee that Cameron is chairing on the renegotiation, suggests that its major emphasis will be on EU citizens access to tax credits and the British welfare system and deregulation and protections for the single market.
It is unclear at the moment what kind of deal Cameron will be able to get. But he’s helped by the difficulties of the putative Out campaign; which is struggling to work out what its relationship with Ukip and Nigel Farage, in particular, should be. Indeed, several veterans of the successful campaign against Britain joining the single currency warn that, the way things are going, Out could get a smaller share of the vote in this referendum than it did in 1975.
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