Eu referendum

Saturday

James Forsyth

Can Cameron and Boris keep a lid on it?

David Cameron’s slap down of Boris Johnson on Monday was one of the most brutal, and personal, that I’ve seen in six and a half years of reporting on parliament. But, as I report in my Sun column today, Number 10 are now keen to calm things down. Indeed, even some of Cameron’s closest allies now concede that the tone he took with Boris on Monday was a mistake. I’m told that Cameron and Boris have been in contact and are now exchanging, dread word, ‘bantery’ texts. One well-placed source is clear that the ‘PM’s tone will be much more emollient from now on’. Though, given how irritated Cameron is

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Why will no one in the cabinet admit to being a Europhile?

One of the oddest features of the cabinet majority for staying in the EU is that almost no one in it admits to being a Europhile. How is it, then, that the very last-century ideas of Edward Heath, Ken Clarke, Michael Heseltine and Chris Patten can still exercise so much power over those who have so strongly and, in some cases, consistently criticised the EU in the past — Philip Hammond, Theresa May, Michael Fallon, Sajid Javid, Oliver Letwin, Liz Truss, Stephen Crabb, and, of course, David Cameron himself? Obviously one factor is that Tory MPs have found it convenient in recent years to adopt Eurosceptic protective colouring in their constituencies.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Cameron dismisses second referendum idea as ‘complete fiction’

Has David Cameron settled on a strategy for dealing with his opponents in the EU referendum? The Prime Minister was clearly caught on the hop by the decisions of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove to back the ‘Out’ side at the weekend, and his angry digs at the Mayor in the Commons on Monday showed that. But later in the week, the Prime Minister tried to patch things up a little by saying that Boris was a ‘great friend’, which suggested an attempt at least at calming things down. But today in response to Michael Howard’s decision to back Brexit, Cameron said that claims made by those like the former

Michael Howard

Michael Howard: why it’s time to leave the EU

Michael Howard has said he believes Britain should leave the EU. The former Conservative leader said David Cameron’s attempts to renegotiate had ‘met with failure’. Here, in an extract from his article published in the Daily Telegraph, he says Britain is better off out of Europe: Europe’s leaders may spurn the possibility of a new round of negotiations. They – and others – will certainly deny any possibility of this kind between now and our vote. They want us to vote to remain. The Prime Minister says that the possibility of further negotiation is “for the birds”. We shall see. But if he’s right it will just mean that Europe’s

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Who will watch for BBC bias in the EU referendum campaign?

It is wearisome work, but I hope the ‘leave’ campaign is carefully monitoring the BBC’s coverage of the referendum. On Monday, the first full weekday since Mr Cameron’s ‘legally binding’ deal, I listened to the Today programme for more than two hours. I heard six speakers for ‘remain’ and two (John Mills and Nigel Lawson) for ‘leave’. In this I am not including any of the BBC interviewers themselves, though my hunch, based solely on the way they ask questions, is that all of them, with the possible exception of John Humphrys, are for ‘remain’. The guests explicitly in favour of ‘remain’ were Carolyn Fairbairn, Sir Mike Rake, Stanley Johnson and Michael Fallon. Jonathan

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 25 February 2016

Vote no, vote often David Cameron scorned Boris Johnson’s idea that voting to leave the EU might result in further reforms followed by another referendum. History, though, would side with Boris. — In June 1992 Denmark rejected the Maastrict Treaty, with 50.7 per cent voting against in a referendum. Denmark was granted four opt-outs, including from the single currency, and held another referendum a year later. — Ireland rejected the Lisbon Treaty in a 2005 referendum, with 61.5 voting against. After several concessions, Irish voters approved it a year later. — An ‘out’ vote might serve British teams well at the European football championships. In the same month that Denmark voted

Dot Wordsworth

Special status

‘Special status?’ said my husband. ‘You mean like executioners, butchers and undertakers in Japan?’ I hadn’t suggested that, but had been thinking aloud about the phrase which, according to David Cameron, now describes Britain’s position in Europe: special status. My husband once went to Japan, which, he thinks, makes him an expert. He learnt about the ancient monkey performances given by people called Burakumin, a sort of untouchable. Apart from performing with monkeys, which was banned in the 20th century, they have been associated with unclean trades such as those he mentioned. Special, as I have remarked before, is slippery. The special relationship between Britain and America has at times

Toby Young Toby Young

Vote ‘leave’ and stop the blurring of Britain

I don’t remember the last European referendum being nearly as dramatic as the current one. In 1975, we were being asked about our membership of the Common Market, not the -European Union, so there was less at stake — at any rate, that’s what the inners -wanted us to believe. The battle was also much more one-sided. Then as now, the pro-European side included the Prime Minister and the leaders of the other two main parties, but there were fewer cabinet ministers on the other side and it was easier to -caricature the antis (Tony Benn, Enoch Powell) as extremists. In 1975, the national press was overwhelmingly in favour of

Harry Mount

Diary – 25 February 2016

The Prime Minister is pretty angry with Boris. But the idea that they’ve competed with each other since school is wrong. Boris is two years older than Cameron — and differences in age are like dog years when you’re young. When I was 13, 15-year-olds seemed like grown-ups, 6ft tall with three days’ growth. When I interviewed Cameron last year, he said he’d hardly known Boris at Eton because he was in College — the scholars’ house — and two years above him. Cameron did remember Boris on the rugby field because he was so dishevelled and ferocious. And he watched him in a few debates at the Oxford Union.

Philip Kyle

The European Parliament: a sword of Damocles hanging over Cameron

David Cameron had a tough time trying to convince his European counterparts at the European Council; but hopefully he will be up for seconds when he goes head-to-head with the European Parliament. He paid its Members a long overdue visit last week, but only met with a select few. He will have to do more than that if he wants to avoid more drama. There is nothing Members of the European Parliament hate more than being left out. Add to that being told what to do by a Member State government and you are serving them a very bitter cocktail. There is not an awful lot of respect as it

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Are there any useful parallels between the EU referendum and religious history?

Niall Ferguson got me thinking about this in his Sunday Times piece, in which he rejected the allure of Brexit and declared himself an ‘Anglosceptic’. He concluded: ‘In the days before empire, Henry VIII’s version of Brexit was to renounce Roman Catholicism and divorce Catherine of Aragon. A true sceptic in those days would have advised him to Bremain — and unite against the Turk.’ It’s an odd choice of illustration, because in that case Brexit did work, it paved the way for a stronger braver England, then Britain. It was the making of us. Tudor history is surely a precedent in the Brexiters’ favour. So can Boris dress up

David Owen

Lord Owen: ‘Now is the time to vote to leave the EU’

The vision of a European Common Market was a good one when in 1962 membership was first envisaged for the UK. Nevertheless, we were rightly warned even then by the leader of the Labour Party, Hugh Gaitskell, that a federal Europe lurked in the background. As far back as 1971 Edward Heath’s White Paper on entry misleadingly promised ‘no erosion of essential sovereignty’. That was untrue then and is much more so today. European law does override British law and David Cameron has failed to achieve any Treaty amendment to change this. What we have contrived in the EU is the pretension that you can be partly a country and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tory dogfight

  [audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/insidethetorieseudogfight/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth, Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman discuss the Tory dogfight over Europe”] Listen [/audioplayer] Many Tories had doubts about David Cameron’s EU renegotiation, but only Boris Johnson was promised a piece of legislation to assuage his particular concerns. It was quite a compliment. The so-called Sovereignty Bill was, in effect, the Get Boris Onside Act. It was designed to deal with the Mayor of London’s fears about the relationship between the British parliament and courts and the EU. It was also mooted that Boris would be offered a top cabinet job — perhaps Foreign Secretary. The Prime Minister was convinced that this combined offer would be

Nigel Farndale

Out on the farm

If the Church of England was once the Tory party at prayer, then the nation’s shotgun-owning farmers were the party’s armed wing. I grew up on a farm in the Yorkshire Dales and must have been about 18 before I met someone who didn’t identify as TBC (True Blue Conservative). Ours was one of the safest Tory seats in the country, with the local MP being Leon Brittan and then William Hague. And Margaret Thatcher was considered a hero in our ‘community’ not because of the Falklands war or her defeat of Arthur Scargill but because she liked to greet the dawn by listening to Farming Today on Radio 4

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Meet the ‘out’ campaign’s secret weapon: Jeremy Corbyn

Europe has opened up an unbridgeable chasm in the Conservative party. Labour remains, near as dammit, united. On the EU referendum, an opposition accustomed to defeat has a rare chance of victory. Yet when Jeremy Corbyn makes the case for staying in he speaks without conviction. Like a man called into work on his day off, his weary expression and dispirited voice tell you he would rather be somewhere else. Tory MPs, so divided that it is hard to see how they can stay in the same party, unite in laughing at him. The Labour leadership and most of the unions seem unaware that this is a fight over the

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The City says it’s for staying in but I wonder what the big beasts think

‘The City is in no doubt that staying in Europe is the only way ahead,’ declared Mark Boleat for the City of London Corporation. Likewise Chris Cummings of the lobby group TheCityUK praised David Cameron for delivering ‘a really special deal’. The official Square Mile is squarely for ‘remain’, confident that the Prime Minister has secured safeguards to let the UK keep control of a thriving financial sector in a multi–currency EU. But with all due respect, I wonder what the real players think. The economists Gerard Lyons and Ruth Lea are two other respected City voices, and they warn that those safeguards won’t be worth much as Paris, Frankfurt

Wednesday

Ross Clark

Big business backing the ‘In’ campaign shows us what’s wrong with the EU

So, FTSE 100 company bosses have come out in favour of staying in the EU – even if, as Ed West notes, the 198 signatories in a letter to the Times represent only 36 companies. I wonder if anyone dropped out at the last moment to reduce the tally below the figure of 200. Of course big business supports the EU. It always has and always will. But who cares? What matters is what smaller, wealth-creating and job-creating businesses think. And they are much more Eurosceptic. A YouGov poll published in January revealed the huge divide between big business and the rest of the private sector on the issue. Out

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Why Jeremy Corbyn is the ‘out’ campaign’s secret weapon

Europe has opened up an unbridgeable chasm in the Conservative party. Labour remains, near as dammit, united. On the EU referendum, an opposition accustomed to defeat has a rare chance of victory. Yet when Jeremy Corbyn makes the case for staying in he speaks without conviction. Like a man called into work on his day off, his weary expression and dispirited voice tell you he would rather be somewhere else. Tory MPs, so divided that it is hard to see how they can stay in the same party, unite in laughing at him. The Labour leadership and most of the unions seem unaware that this is a fight over the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Michael Gove attacks EU reforms as ‘not legally binding’

Michael Gove’s BBC interview, in which he disagrees with his Prime Minister over whether his renegotiation deal is indeed legally binding, is a sign of how confusing the referendum campaign is going to get. The Justice Secretary is perfectly polite as he dismisses the stance of his own government, but he is still the Justice Secretary dismissing the stance of his own government, and that is only made marginally less odd by the suspension of collective responsibility. Gove said: ‘The European Court of Justice interprets the European Union treaties and until this agreement is embodied in treaty change, then the European Court of Justice is not bound by this agreement.’

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Undecided Tory MPs feel the pressure over EU referendum

The number of Tory MPs who have yet to declare what their stance is in the EU referendum is dwindling. Some of those are away, including Tracey Crouch, who is on maternity leave and gave this very amusing response to those asking about her priorities, while others have decided not to reveal which way they will vote because they are holding public meetings between now and the vote, and want to stay neutral so that they can chair those. But some are either torn, or just trying to work out the best way of announcing their intentions. And for those MPs, the pressure is becoming rather more intense. Many were