The secure telephone lines between the Cameron camp and Brussels will have been buzzing early today after The Times reported that Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, had effectively rubbished one of the central planks of David Cameron's election manifesto.
The Times reports sources close to Juncker saying there is no prospect of formal plans for treaty change while Juncker remains president. And his term is not up until the end of 2019 – two years beyond the promised date for Britain’s in/out referendum if the Tories win the general election.
Yet Cameron made it clear in January during an interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr that he would renegotiate Britain’s terms of membership – in particular regarding the payment of benefits to new migrants and the chance to opt out of the founding principle of “ever closer union” - before putting the big question to the British people.
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More important, Cameron stated very clearly that such changes would require “full-on treaty change”.
As for the Tory manifesto launched yesterday, there was a pledge on page 72: “We will negotiate a new settlement for Britain in the EU. And then we will ask the British people whether they want to stay in on this basis, or leave. We will honour the result of the referendum, whatever the outcome.”
How the “new settlement” will be “negotiated” is simply glossed over. It can only be assumed now that, in order to pacify defectors to Ukip, Cameron is prepared to risk going ahead with a referendum without negotiating new terms – thus increasing the risk of a vote to quit.
One option being bandied about is a so-called “protocol” that would promise amendments to Britain’s terms of membership at some unspecified date in the future when Brussels is in the mood to consider treaty changes.
But as Philip Webster, editor of the Times’s Red Box blog, writes today, such a “protocol” will never satisfy hardline Eurosceptics on the Tory backbenches nor those Conservative supporters tempted by Ukip.
“Evidence that Brussels is digging in could undermine the Tory objective of persuading former supporters [ i.e. deserters to Ukip] to return to the fold,” says Webster.
The news from Brussels will doubtless embolden Nigel Farage at the launch today of his own manifesto - Ukip being the only party in favour of pulling out of the EU come what may.
