David Cameron's EU headaches just like John Major's, say newspapers
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Version 0 of 1. We are back to 1993. A Tory prime minister is once again struggling to control his Eurosceptic ministers and MPs. David Cameron is suffering from a similar headache over an internal revolt to the one that undermined John Major 22 years ago (example here). A crop of headlines on Sunday reflected Cameron’s Major-like difficulties: “50 Tory MPs start anti-EU offensive” (Sunday Telegraph); “Eurosceptics at war” (Mail on Sunday); “Tory EU plot” (Sun on Sunday); and “Cameron trying to load EU debate, say No campaigners” (Independent on Sunday). The Observer splashed on a warning to Cameron by a Polish minister “not to fool voters” in the referendum plus a two-page analysis of the prime minister’s difficulties in negotiating reforms. The Sunday Times’s front page story, “EU can spend millions to back ‘yes’ vote”, touched on yet another twist in the story. Sunday evening TV news bulletins showed Barack Obama sitting alongside Cameron during a break in the G7 summit in Germany and giving him unwanted advice on the US’s wish for Britain to remain in the EU. That heralded a crop of front page national newspaper headlines about the EU on Monday, most of which would surely generate a wry smile from John Major. “Cabinet told: Vote for Europe or resign” (Daily Telegraph); “PM: I will sack ministers who call for EU exit” (Guardian); “PM: Back me or I will sack you” (Daily Mail); “New war over EU referendum” (Daily Express) and “Cameron to demand ministers quit government if they campaign for Brexit” (Financial Times). Other papers carried similar articles on inside pages: “PM’s message to his Eurosceptic ministers: back my referendum campaign or resign” (Independent); “PM: EU either back me or I’ll sack you” (Daily Mirror); “Toe line... or I’ll sack you” (The Sun); “Stay in EU, Obama tells Cameron over a beer” (Metro); and “‘100 Tory MPs will vote for British exit from EU’” (i). The Times, picking up on Cameron’s decision to lift the referendum campaign spending allowance by 40%, splashed on “Sceptics cry foul as PM raises EU poll cash limit”. In other words, the major story of June 2015 is the Major story of July 1993. Within weeks of winning an unexpected general election victory, Cameron is faced by internal dissension. No wonder the Labour-supporting Mirror could not help but twist the knife in its editorial, “EU poll will skewer PM”. It argued that Cameron’s warning to Tory ministers “smacks of weakness rather than strength”... and amounted to “a tacit admission” that Cameron’s “‘reforms’ could be mainly cosmetic, the hollowest of empty victories”. It gleefully forecast that Cameron “will struggle to avert a Tory civil war as Europhobes in his party realise they were gullible or stupid to believe it was ever a principled stand by the PM”. And it concluded: “Europe is toxic for the Tories and the party will tear itself apart. Again. David Cameron is looking more like the new John Major every day”. The Tory-supporting Daily Mail proved the point by adopting an oppositionist line to the prime minister. It contended that the rules of engagement for the in/out EU referendum must be fair and aired its “grave concerns about the plan... to rig the financial rules in favour of the government position (which, we suspect, is almost certain to be ‘yes’ to staying in the Brussels club)”. But that was only one arm of its argument: “We fear Mr Cameron is making a tactical mistake by insisting that all members of the government must back his position on how to vote in the referendum, or resign. Allowing ministers a free vote would show absolute confidence in his ability to negotiate a better deal from Brussels – including significant curbs on migration – then successfully sell it to his party. By contrast, putting a gun to MPs’ heads will surely sow division, trigger resignations and risk opening up the sort of bitter splits on Europe that – as history shows – are bad for the Tory Party and, most crucially, Britain”. Bitter splits that the Mail appears eager to foment. The Times also agreed that the row will go on and on, with a group of Eurosceptic MPs looking set to enhance — and perhaps dominate — the case for Britain to go it alone. It continued: “It is hard to believe that Mr Cameron’s efforts will win them over, or indeed that they have any true desire to be won”. The Times believed that Cameron’s “one-nation Conservative” agenda “will be drowned out by Tories debating Europe” and that “Tory modernisers may wince at echoes of the travails of John Major, leading to the defeat of 1997”. But the paper remained optimistic about the nature of the debate due to the emergence of “a new, more credible lobby” that “could help the prime minister to convince fellow EU leaders that, without substantial changes to welfare rules, the size of the EU budget and protections from political centralisation, the threat of a British departure is real”. Then again, the Times pointed to the depth of antagonism towards the EU within Cameron’s cabinet, suggesting that his “back me or I’ll sack you” threat could split the party: “A good number of leading ministers, including Michael Gove, Chris Grayling, Iain Duncan Smith and Sajid Javid, are thought to be sympathetic to Brexit. Forcing them to sign up to keeping Britain inside the EU on what they might regard as unsatisfactory terms could pull his government apart”. It concluded that “until now, Britain’s pending referendum has felt like a phoney war. This may be where it starts to get real”. That reality could well lead to Cameron echoing Major, who famously referred to his cabinet EU troublemakers in an unguarded moment - caught on a microphone he thought had been switched off - as “bastards”. Some 20 years later, speaking at a Commons press gallery lunch, he told journalists: “Calling three of my colleagues bastards was absolutely unforgivable. My only excuse is that it was true”. Does Cameron feel the same way about his Eurosceptic ministers? Watch out for those microphones, prime minister. |