The coming rebellion: Cameron referendum promise fails to stem tide

By Ian Dunt

David Cameron's pledge to hold a referendum on the EU appears to have galvanised rather than placated his backbenchers, amid signs he may be unable to hold back the demands of eurosceptics.

Liam Fox, who stepped down as defence secretary after he was discovered to be running a shadow foreign policy unit in his department, will make a speech today calling for an in-or-out poll rather than the more moderate set of options muted by the prime minister.

"I would like to see Britain negotiate a new relationship on the basis that, if we achieved it and our future relationship was economic rather than political, we would advocate acceptance in a referendum of this new dynamic," he will say later.

"If, on the other hand, others would not accede to our requests for a rebalancing in the light of the response to the euro crisis, then we would recommend rejection and potential departure from the EU."

The speech comes as eurosceptics show increased confidence in the wake of the Cameron pledge.

"The case for a referendum is growing by the day," John Baron, the Tory MP who organised a letter demanding a referendum to Mr Cameron, told politics.co.uk last week.

"David Cameron could stand up tomorrow and say we'll put it in our manifesto pledge.

"I don't think people will believe that – too many promise have been broken. That is the value of putting it on the statute book, that people know for sure that, unless the next prime minister repeals it, it will take place."

From the other side of the debate, business secretary Vince Cable branded the iea of a referendum during the current crisis "horribly irrelevant".

Speaking to the BBC's Sunday Politics yesterday, Ukip leader Nigel Farage said no-one would believe Cameron's promises after his pre-election pledge of a referendum in the case of further transfer of powers.

"All he's done here is to give some sort of vague promise that there might be a referendum in the future, but that it will not be about our membership of the European Union," Farage said.

"If he thinks by doing that that he’s shot Ukip's fox and he's buried this issue in the long grass, he's in for another think."
Labour tried to capitalise on the prime minister's apparently contradictory positions on a referendum.

"On Friday the prime minister seemed to be ruling out an EU referendum," shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander said.

"On Sunday he's hinting that he is ruling one in. the foreign secretary was then sent out to claim 'the prime minister is not changing our position'. It's a shambles.

"This shambles reveals more about the prime minister's weakness in the Conservative party than the strength of his convictions about Europe."

Labour has also been adopting a gradually more eurosceptic position since the eurozone crisis started although, like Cameron, it does not believe now is the time to start trying to renegotiate Britain's membership.

Mr Cameron promised over the weekend to hold a referendum in the next parliament if he won a majority, but he would not countenance a full in-or-out vote.

Instead, Britain would vote on aspects of the ERU it would back away from – such as its legal, social or employment rules.

Experts are uncertain quite how such a vote would take place. If Britain was able to repatriate powers it could then ask the public to vote on what the government had already done, although that would be a strange and counter-intuitive approach to take.

If the public voted before negotiations, it would be uncertain whether it Britain could secure the changes.