Could Nick Clegg really back the Tories and risk an EU exit?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/20/clegg-tories-eu-exit-lib-dems-anti-europeans

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All leaders are tested for strength and courage. Nowhere has that trial of mettle mattered more than over Europe, with its toxic twin, immigration. Ed Miliband stands firm, resisting nervous colleagues who feared refusing an in/out referendum would be punished at the polls: doesn’t he trust the voters? But he has stuck by his personal conviction that Britain’s future must be in the European Union.

Who is the weak one? Compare Miliband’s stand with David Cameron’s slippery appeasement of his Eurosceptics. He ducked his Tony Blair clause IV moment, never standing up to them, and has been on the run ever since, dragged towards the exit gate.

Not much a government does is irrevocable, so it’s odd that this election has almost ignored Europe. Returning Cameron to Downing Street means a frightening risk of Britain leaving the EU, rapidly followed by Scotland leaving the UK. A Conservative, not a Labour government backed by the SNP, brings the greatest risk of UK break-up.

Related: Face down the Eurosceptics in your party, David Cameron | Tim Bale

A dangerous complacency grips the establishment: the City, business, civil service and all the deep state institutions. Leaving the EU is so unthinkable that they assume it can’t happen. Cameron is “one of us” so he’ll somehow secure an “in” result for his 2017 referendum: Harold Wilson pulled it off in 1975. But so much is dangerously wrong with that lazy line of thinking.

Back in 1975, the “in” side was backed by all the press, except the Morning Star. Now virtually all would be hysterically anti-EU, as ordered by their non-dom and foreign owners, Europhobes one and all, pulling along the broadcasters in their wake.

Wilson’s Labour party was split but the great majority of his cabinet argued strongly to stay in. Not so next time: Cameron has fired all his pro-Europeans – Ken Clarke, Damian Green and Dominic Grieve – while the Spectator’s James Forsythe estimates nine in the cabinet are “outs”. Newer Tory MPs all had to be anti-European to get selected.

Holding a referendum two years into a weak and unpopular government will invite voters to take revenge for far deeper cuts than yet seen. An anti-elite, anti-politician mood would see Ukip riding high. The public, according to polls, don’t trust statistics suggesting a “Brexit” might lose 3m jobs. Business and the City have much less influence than in 1975, due to bank scandals and executive greed. Besides, most trusted British brand names are now foreign owned, with directors uninvolved in British politics.

Cameron’s Eurosceptic party members will be about to select his successor: candidates such as Boris Johnson will not put country before opportunism as contenders vie for “Outist” credibility. How will the argument shape up? The Outs will be hot with fervid certainty, but the Ins will sound limp, defending an EU always needing reform, echoing Yeats: The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.

Will Cameron put holding his party together before Britain’s interests? If he stands for staying in, his party will split, perhaps permanently. So far all the signs are he would side with the Eurosceptics.

In 2005, to be selected as party leader, he promised to pull his MEPs out of the European People’s party of like-minded conservatives, infuriating Angela Merkel, whose Christian Democrats could have been allies for reform. Preferring a motley party of minor far-rightists has hugely diminished Cameron’s influence – as has everything he has done since, from his failed veto to bungling his opposition to Jean-Claude Juncker. Nothing appeased his troublemakers: an astonishing 81 defied a three-line whip, trying to force an instant referendum.

Each time the prime minister tried to leapfrog the sceptics they advanced and demanded more. He thought his 2013 promise of an in/out referendum would kill the issue but each concession inflamed it. Announcing it, he said: “I will campaign for [staying in] with all my heart and soul.” But that didn’t last long. By 2014 he was threatening: “If our concerns fall on deaf ears, I rule nothing out.”

On the Today programme last September he said he felt “a thousand times more strongly” about keeping Scotland in the UK than staying in the EU, though one relies on the other. At the 2014 party conference he said immigration would be central to renegotiation: “I will go to Brussels. I will not take no for an answer. When it comes to free movement I will get what Britain needs.” His party won’t let him off that hook.

Only fantasists pretend there’s any chance of Cameron effecting a new 28-country treaty by 2017, forcing others into deeply unwanted referendums. Why should they? Signs are the EU is mentally disengaging from us. There is no chance of rewriting the EU’s founding principles of freedom of movement and why would they let Britain escape social rules to became the sweatshop of Europe in pay and working rights?

Nor can there be a release from the European Convention on Human Rights, also sought by the sceptics. As for controlling our borders, once we were out of the EU, why would the French keep camps in Calais, instead of letting migrants freely cross the Channel? A Brexit deal would be struck from weakness: they take 40% of our exports, we import just 7% of theirs. The Swiss only get free trade by agreeing free movement of people: so would we.

Despite the past five years, in every fibre of their being Lib Dems are pro-Europeans

The campaign group British Influence sounds the alarm as do two trenchant new books, Denis MacShane’s Brexit: How Britain Will Leave Europe and Roger Liddle’s The Risk of Brexit. But the deep establishment is so tribally Tory that they stay silent when they should blast Cameron for risking the country’s future. Can they really put protecting their pockets from Labour’s top tax rate before the national interest?

Nick Clegg was always strong on Europe, like Miliband standing against the populist tide. But his great test will come if the Tories are the larger party. He talks of being “equidistant” – but can he mean that over the EU?

No constitutional law requires Lib Dems to back the party with most seats: in 2010 there was no numerical alternative, but this time they will have to decide who they are. If across the House the left – split between Labour and the Scottish National party – is the majority, that settles it. Despite the past five years, by nature Lib Dems remain just left of centre. In every fibre of their being they are pro-Europeans, so how could they back Cameron and plunge the country into Europhobic turmoil, risking an agonising exit from Europe? A Cameron win will plunge Britain into referendum frenzy, starting on 8 May.