Eu referendum

One of the things that worries me about a vote to leave the European Union (which I should like to cast) is that it might cause Scotland to vote to leave the United Kingdom. There’s not much point in ‘getting our country back’ if we then lose it, although I suppose English nationalists would not agree with my definition of ‘our country’. But the SNP threat needs thinking round carefully. First, a threat is not a fact. Second, it cannot be right to disaggregate the United Kingdom vote in a United Kingdom referendum. It will certainly be interesting to find out how Scots voted, but if they vote differently from

David Cameron might have announced this week that Cabinet Ministers will be allowed to campaign for Out come the EU referendum. But Downing Street is doing what it can to limit how many ministers take up this offer. At the moment, the consensus view around the Cabinet table is that four Cabinet Ministers are going to be for Out—Chris Grayling, Theresa Villiers, John Whittingdale and IDS—with another—Priti Patel—highly likely to. As I say in The Sun today, if Cameron can keep the number of Cabinet Outers down to four or five, Number 10 will be delighted. Cameron will be able to say that the vast majority of the Cabinet support

Liam Fox’s new year party at the Carlton Club has become the traditional start to the Tory Party’s year. This year there were 11 Cabinet members including the Chancellor, Home Secretary, Defence Secretary, Business Secretary and Boris Johnson. I’d say that most of the Tory MPs there are ‘leavers’, who have this week been given permission to campaign freely against a ‘remain’ campaign expected to be led by the Prime Minister.  So in this way, the old Tory wars are about to start again. I look at this in my Daily Telegraph column today. This is not Eurosceptic vs Europhile. This will be a battle between Eurosceptics: the ones who think

David Cameron’s declaration that ministers will be able to campaign on the opposite side from him come the EU referendum has prompted much speculation about who will take advantage of this freedom. One of those regarded as being undecided on this matter was the Environment Secretary Liz Truss. She is ideologically close to the Out camp, she founded the Free Enterprise Group of Tory MPs which is now headed by James Cleverly – an Outer – and worked closely with Vote Leave’s Dominic Cummings when she was an Education Minister, but she is also a Cameron loyalist. Her speech this morning to the Oxford Farming Conference suggests that Truss is

In his statement to the Commons this afternoon, David Cameron confirmed that ministers will be free to campaign for Britain to leave the European Union – and he gave a hint about when the referendum might be, too. The Prime Minister told the Chamber that he couldn’t guarantee agreement at February’s European Council summit, but: ‘If [agreement] is possible, the I’m keen to get on and hold a referendum. We shouldn’t do it precipitately, I’ve looked at previous precedents, I note that when Labour held a referendum in 1975, there was only a month between the completion of the legislation and the referendum. I don’t think that’s enough. ‘When the

In the new year the EU referendum battle will heat up, and it seems the Conservative party are already starting to shuffle things around in preparation. Stephen Gilbert, the party’s current deputy chairman, has today announced that he is standing down from this position. When Gilbert originally became deputy chairman, it was agreed that he could also hold non-executive roles with other groups. In November, he took up a part-time position at Populus, the official polling company for the main campaign to keep Britain in the EU, Britain Stronger in Europe (BSIE). While this position was in accordance with Conservative party rules, the move infuriated plenty of Tory Eurosceptics, who

David Cameron is warming to the idea of making Boris Johnson Foreign Secretary. As I write in The Sun this morning, Cameron is drawn to the idea of sending Boris to the Foreign Office in a post-May reshuffle. But a Cabinet ally of the Prime Minister stresses that Boris will have to be ‘unequivocally yes’ come the EU referendum if he is to be Foreign Secretary. It is easy to see why the idea of doing what it take to bind Boris in before the referendum is gaining traction in Number 10. Polling shows that Cameron backing Britain staying part of the EU gives the In campaign a big boost.

David Cameron was in such a hurry to tell everyone about how well last night’s talks with EU leaders had gone that the crest hadn’t been properly stuck on his lectern when he gave his press conference. It wobbled off and hung at an angle as the Prime Minister reported ‘a lot of goodwill’ and claimed that progress was being made in preparation for the European Council summit in February where he hopes to sign off his renegotiation plan. But nothing was agreed last night and EU leaders are claiming that Cameron has accepted he cannot discriminate against citizens of other member states, why was the Prime Minister in such

As David Cameron prepares to make his case to European leaders over dinner this evening, the Out campaign is stepping up its preparations for the referendum. Vote Leave will host 10 regional launches in the New Year and appoint campaign directors for each region. It’ll also hire staff to work at a constituency level. Combine this with a central campaign team that contains former senior aides to Theresa May, Michael Gove and Philip Hammond and you have the basis for a formidable operation. With the backing of senior business figures such as Crispin Odey and Luke Johnson, they also shouldn’t have any trouble raising money. But the campaign itself is

Corbyn was back on drone duty at PMQs. He monotoned his way through six questions about NHS funding and gave the impression that a winter crisis would really make his Christmas. Ed Miliband had the same habit of suggesting that only mass-death could save him. Semi-comatose Corbs remained on ‘stand-by mode’ throughout. He didn’t react even when the Tories pounced on an unforced gaffe. As he offered his Christmas greetings to the nation, the Labour leader mentioned Britain’s very own space daredevil, Tim Peake, – ‘who is not on the planet.’ ‘Nor are you,’ hooted the Tories. Angus Robertson of the SNP asked David Cameron for ‘guarantees’ that Scotland won’t

David Cameron will be relived that his European Referendum Bill is finally on its way to Royal Assent, after weeks of threats from Labour peers. But Europe being Europe, there are a whole heap of other problems that the Prime Minister needs to contend with too. It’s not just the specific question of whether David Cameron can get any sot of reform to access to benefits for migrants that looks like he’s won a battle, but whether the overall renegotiation and its result are really sufficient to impress MPs and then voters into backing staying in the European Union. Today’s European Scrutiny committee report on the renegotiation warns that the

When the EU is in crisis, the Commission’s answer is, inevitably, more Europe. So, its response to the migrant crisis is to propose an EU border force that could, in extremis, take over the management of Schengen countries’ borders without permission. Now, Britain is not in Schengen so this proposal would not apply here. But it is worth considering just how federalising it is. Under this proposal, the Italians, say, could suddenly find the EU manning its borders. It would be a major erosion of national sovereignty. The Guardian’s Ian Traynor reports that the French and the Germans are backing this idea, which gives it a reasonable chance of success.

This is an extended version of an interview with the Prime Minister from the Christmas special issue of The Spectator. The last time David Cameron sat down with The Spectator for an interview, he was on a train and looking rather worried. There were just weeks to go until the general election and the polls were not moving. At the time, almost no one — and certainly not him — imagined that he was on the cusp of a historic election -victory that would not just sweep the Tories to power but send Labour into an abyss. This time, we meet on another train. But he’s far more relaxed, reflecting on winning

David Cameron has dropped his plans to sign off his renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with Europe at the December European Council summit, accepting that he’s not going to get the deal he wants within the next few weeks. In a call today with Angela Merkel, the Prime Minister ‘noted that the scale of what we are asking for means we will not resolve this in one go and consequently he did not expect to get agreement at the December European Council’, a Downing Street spokesperson said. The summit will instead involve a ‘substantive discussion of the proposed changes in each area’. Downing Street also said that ‘there remain difficult issues