If Cameron wants to stay in the EU, he needs to stop appeasing his enemies

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/16/cameron-eu-referendum-rebels

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The Kraken wakes! The great Europhobic beast at the heart of the Tory party was never asleep, just feigning a short shut-eye during the election. What a brief time it allowed David Cameron to relish his victory before roaring into life to show him what hell a 12-seat majority can be. Ask John Major.

'The bastards' are back. Grand master of the bastard lodge, Bill Cash, has tabled amendments to the EU referendum bill

Already, the spectre of a backbench rebellion forced Cameron into a screeching U-turn: within 12 hours of telling the press his ministers must toe his EU line, they bared their teeth and he knuckled under instead. His pretence that he’d been “over-interpreted” was a new addition to the lexicon of terminological inexactitudes.

“The bastards” are back. Grand master of the bastard lodge Sir Bill Cash has tabled rebel amendments to today’s EU referendum bill, demanding a 16-week purdah period during which civil servants aren’t allowed to make political comments – or, as Cash sees it, warp the result with pro-EU propaganda (expect no equalising purdah from the Mail, Telegraph or Murdoch press). Cameron will cave in on this, too, as his whips no longer have the whip hand. Already 110 MPs have signed up to the anti-EU Conservatives for Britain – over half of all Tory backbenchers. They claim a clutch of cabinet ministers in silent support, alongside usual suspects – former ministers Owen Paterson, Liam Fox and John Redwood.

Were it just diehards plus Nigel Farage, the campaign to leave the EU might look jaded. But the younger, dynamic convenor of that group, Steve Baker, leads a rebel group bristling with new MPs: no pro-European gets selected these days. On the evening of the Queen’s speech, Paterson held welcome drinks for them and 50 of the 74 new intake turned up, where, reports the Sunday Telegraph, “the younger generation of Tories” supported “a truly radical redrawing of Britain’s contract with the EU”. They wanted restoration of British “sovereignty”, giving parliament a veto over any EU law. That, as they all well know, is a deliberately impossible demand: 28 countries’ parliamentary vetoes would end the EU at a stroke – exactly as Baker’s bunch intends.

Outsiders might look gleefully at the Tory party disintegrating so soon after victory, devouring itself from within. But all who think exit from the EU would be a catastrophe should be alarmed. Cameron set appeasing his unappeasables before the national interest and laid this trapdoor under his feet. Now the whole country is standing on it too, with the fate of the economy, Britain’s place in the world and the union itself at stake.

If Britain leaves the EU, Scotland would most likely leave the union, and a wall would potentially go up on the border with the Republic, effectively unpicking Northern Ireland’s settlement. Surely even someone as focused on shrinking the state as Cameron fears a legacy of a broken Britain, with little England offshore and adrift.

The dangerously complacent think the referendum easily won: opinion polls (ha!) say so and referendums favour the status quo. The might of business and the City will do the heavy lifting, frightening the life out of voters with threats to disinvest, disemploy and decamp. The majesty of senior statesmen, politicians and establishment gravitas will conquer all.

But reasons why not are legion. As Cameron continues his pilgrimage of penance round the EU – Italy, Luxembourg and Slovenia this week – bringing home a significant “renegotiation” looks vanishingly unlikely. Facing real crises with Greece, Ukraine and boatloads of migrants, how frivolous his demands must seem. But resist gloating: he needs to return with adequate window-dressing.

Those who have spoken to sources close to Angela Merkel, such as the Centre of European Reform’s Charles Grant, expect few concessions, mainly symbols not substance. The UK could resile from “ever-closer union” and get assurances that things that were never going to happen anyway – no EU army, no UK in the eurozone. An “emergency brake” delaying eurozone actions that might disadvantage the rest of the EU could be burnished to sound newly tough. Treaty change is out of the question: promises of future treaty changes are empty, relying on uncertain future referendums. Unemployment pay could be barred for the very few new migrants who claim it – but existing case law means tax credits can’t be denied to the many new migrants in low-paid jobs. Free movement of people is absolutely non-negotiable – and that’s what risks swelling the out vote.

Mockery for such trivial gains will greet Cameron’s eventual package. Just watch the sceptical press guffaw, however hard the entire establishment tries to keep a straight face and swear the naked emperor wears fine clothes. The Brexit campaign has been newly joined by formidable young Turks – Dominic Cummings, former Gove adviser, acid-tongued Cameron despiser along with ace organiser, Matthew Elliot of the Taxpayers Alliance, architect of the anti-AV referendum victory. Their factoids are up and running – the “£19bn cost” (real net sum £9bn) of the EU could save the NHS! An anti-politics, anti-establishment drumbeat could catch a public mood disenchanted with a low-ebb, mid-term government.

Cameron laid this trapdoor under his feet. Now the whole country is standing on it, too

Meanwhile, various pro-EU groups try to merge, but risk looking limp and dull. Positive enthusiasm for the EU is hard to rouse: “better in than out” is not inspiring. Labour is right to launch its own pro-EU campaign: the social democratic Europe of fair employment, human rights, a 70-year peace, fraternity and equality is quite a different vision to a rightwing EU only for markets, money and global deal-making.

To win, Cameron has to fight the dragon in his party and kill it. But nothing suggests he has the stomach for that. At every sally he crumples and compromises: his promise to campaign “with all my heart and soul” turned to a party-pleasing threat, “if our concerns fall on deaf ears, I rule nothing out”. He can’t win hearts and minds while still calling every cross-Channel meeting an engagement with an enemy. If he wants Britain to vote for the EU, he will have to stand up for it. That may split his party permanently – as the 1975 referendum began the SDP split from Labour – but better by far than breaking up Britain and breaking Britain from the world.