Brexit

I suppose David Cameron had little choice but to offer a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union. How else could he have held his party together? Indeed, it is possible that he owes some part of his small majority to that promise. Nevertheless, it will all end badly. I think there is no plausible scenario in which it can end well for Cameron. Indeed, it is entirely possible that having begun this parliament with a majority he - or, rather, his successor - will end it leading a minority administration. The most important thing to remember is that perhaps a quarter of his backbenchers actually want the Prime Minister to fail. They have no interest in his cockamamie renegotation strategy.

Ten years ago France was in meltdown shock as the country that prided itself on being the most European and communitaire of all had said a decisive Non to European integration. Jack Straw, then the foreign secretary, phoned Tony Blair with the result in some jubilation. Jack, one of the nicest senior ministers ever, was never much of a Europhile and the French No meant Britain avoided a plebiscite that would also have said No to Europe. What the French said no was called the EU constitution but in reality was just another treaty agreed between member states after arduous negotiations.

David Cameron is in Holland and France today trying to pave the way for the renegotiation of the terms of Britain’s EU membership. Number 10 believe that now the referendum is definitely happening, the bill for it was published today, they can get other countries to engage with Cameron’s concerns. As I say in the column this week, Cameron’s renegotiation strategy has become clearer in recent weeks. Rather than trying to address every concern about EU membership, he is - as one Cabinet Minister told me - going to ‘focus on three or four big things and make a really big push on them.

Exhilarating, isn't it? A referendum on Britain's continued membership of the European Union is at hand. For the first time in a generation, there's a real possibility that Britain might leave. With that prospect so tantalisingly close, it's tempting to want to rush ahead. 'Bring it on!' many regular readers will say. Hold on. Let's make sure we maximise our chances of winning. Like it, or not, a great many voters - despite all that Brussels red tape and all those ghastly EU commissioners - have yet to be convinced that we should leave. If you think that winning over fifty percent of the votes is easy, just cast your mind back to election night in your constituency... For almost forty years, we Brits have complained about Europe.

Before today’s awful events in Paris, the meeting between David Cameron and Angela Merkel was going to be the big news of the day. The German Chancellor does not always observe the usual rules of neutrality when it comes to foreign elections. In 2012, she endorsed Nicolas Sarkozy in a joint TV interview, declaring that it was ‘natural’ to back a fellow Conservative. Now, there was no indication that Merkel was going to offer Cameron similar backing today. But senior Tories were keen to talk up what they were calling ‘das snub’, the fact that Merkel is not meeting with Miliband. (It is also worth remembering that in 2012, Miliband was busy attacking Cameron, Sarkozy and Merkel with his warnings about Camerkozy economics).

By rights, Jean-Claude Juncker should be in dire political trouble this morning, not lecturing Britain about paying an extra £1.7 billion to the European Commission. Documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists suggest that while Juncker was Prime Minister of Luxembourg, 548 comfort letters were issued to various international businesses about their tax arrangements. These letters allowed multinational companies to get away with paying minimal amounts of tax anywhere but Luxembourg despite the majority of their business being done elsewhere, the ICIJ alleges. The ICIJ claims that more than 340 companies secured secret tax deals with Luxembourg. The ICIJ alleges that the deal with FedEx left 99.

Was that a pop at Hattie? Ed Miliband began PMQs by evoking the centenary of the Great War. ‘We will all be wearing our poppies with particular pride this year,’ he said. And every eye ran along Labour’s front bench to count off the crimson blooms. Balls, poppy. Miliband poppy. Harman, poppy. No, wait. As you were. Harman, no poppy! Her chic, double-breasted grey jacket bore no tribute to the fallen. But I expect it’s a CND thing. All the same, Miliband should send her out to buy one. Tuppence ought to do it. The Labour leader needed a win today. Badly. His poll ratings have dipped to the same level as Gordon Brown’s in 2010, but at least Brown had the excuse of being in a fag-end administration led by a scowling narcissistic tax-junkie.

I know some readers have tired of Scotland's independence debate. That is understandable, even forgivable. It has, after all, been rumbling along for 40 years. There may only be six weeks of campaigning left but these arguments won't go away. You'll be hearing them again and again for the next few years at least. This is true even if Scotland does vote Yes next month. Because the argument about Scotland's place within the Union is really not very different from the argument about Britain's place within the European Union. Of course the similarities are not absolute but they are significant enough to be striking.

Anyone interested in the EU debate should read Dominic Cummings' report on the focus groups he recently conducted for Business for Britain. As well as being a reminder of just how strong the anti-politics mood in the country is, they also sketch out what the challenges for the respective campaigns in any referendum will be. For Out, it'll be showing that exit won't cause economic disaster. The focus groups suggest that if people fear that leaving will cause jobs to be lost in large numbers, then they'll vote to stay despite their dislike of the EU. While In's biggest problem is that voters now spontaneously connect the EU with immigration.

What would the exit negotiations look like if Britain voted to leave the EU? Well, Open Europe tried to give us an idea today hosting a war game sketching out what would happen next. (Seb wrote about their work on the renegotiation earlier). It left me with the view that there would be a second vote on the proposed exit terms. If Britain does vote out in a referendum, it is then—under Article 50—a member of the EU for two years while it tries to negotiate an exit deal. I suspect that the package would be, despite the UK’s trade surplus, relatively ungenerous.

Not that it’s a great surprise, but Liam Fox has come out as an out-er - i.e., he'd vote to leave the European Union if it cannot be reformed. He has hinted at this before, writing that the idea of leaving the EU “holds no terror” for him but on Sunday Politics he explicitly told Andrew Neil that he’d prefer independence to the status quo. Once, that would made Fox a minority voice but now it’s the mainstream position – and one shared, I suspect, by at least a dozen of his Cabinet colleagues who have no yet gone on the record. If you’re happy with Britain’s EU membership, you occupy a fringe position in British politics. And you want to keep the status quo, Fox said with a not-entirely-respectful chuckle, ‘vote Liberal Democrat’.