THE moment had been over two years in the making. Under pressure from his backbenchers, in 2013 David Cameron, the prime minister, had promised that he would reform Britain’s membership of the EU and put the outcome to an in-out referendum if he won another term in office. Fresh from his general election triumph, on June 25th he duly arrived in Brussels to present his wish list to the European Council. But fellow heads of government did not share the prime minister’s sense of occasion. Clashes over Greece and Europe’s migration crisis forced him to shorten his talk to ten minutes. Only Charles Michel, the Belgian premier, deigned to respond to it. Meanwhile François Hollande, France’s president, reportedly nipped to the toilet.
Mr Cameron is attacking on two fronts. One is Brussels, where he seeks concessions to Tory gripes about the EU. His renegotiation aims to make the union more economically liberal and fairer to non-integrationist members like Britain. Yet the summit showed how, with the EU grappling with multiple crises, these demands (however calculatedly modest) are a low priority. The second front is the domestic one, where he seeks to heal his party’s deep divides over Europe and rally most of it behind an “in” vote. There, too, recent events hint at the difficulties ahead.
Critics crowed on June 26th when Downing Street...Continue reading
via Brian Rushton, The Brexit ramp
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