David cameron

Thursday

David Owen

Lord Owen: ‘Now is the time to vote to leave the EU’

From our UK edition

The vision of a European Common Market was a good one when in 1962 membership was first envisaged for the UK. Nevertheless, we were rightly warned even then by the leader of the Labour Party, Hugh Gaitskell, that a federal Europe lurked in the background. As far back as 1971 Edward Heath’s White Paper on entry misleadingly promised ‘no erosion of essential sovereignty’. That was untrue then and is much more so today. European law does override British law and David Cameron has failed to achieve any Treaty amendment to change this. What we have contrived in the EU is the pretension that you can be partly a country and partly not a country.

James Forsyth

The Tory dogfight

From our UK edition

  [audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/insidethetorieseudogfight/media.mp3" title="James Forsyth, Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman discuss the Tory dogfight over Europe"] Listen [/audioplayer] Many Tories had doubts about David Cameron’s EU renegotiation, but only Boris Johnson was promised a piece of legislation to assuage his particular concerns. It was quite a compliment. The so-called Sovereignty Bill was, in effect, the Get Boris Onside Act. It was designed to deal with the Mayor of London’s fears about the relationship between the British parliament and courts and the EU. It was also mooted that Boris would be offered a top cabinet job — perhaps Foreign Secretary.

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Shouldn’t ‘preventable deaths’ really be called ‘homicides due to negligence’?

From our UK edition

David Cameron was grilled today on plans for a ‘7-day NHS’. This is his attempt to iron out a slight kink in the NHS schedules. The trouble is that although our heroic doctors and nurses keep regular hours our deadly diseases are hopelessly unpredictable and like to smite us down whenever they feel a bit grim and reaperish. Perhaps we should write to them about it. In practice this means that NHS efficiency varies widely over the ‘7-day cycle’ or ‘week’ as it’s known. Get ill on a Tuesday and you’ll probably be at a party on Friday. Get ill on a Saturday and you’ll probably be at a funeral on Wednesday. Your own.

James Forsyth

PMQs: Cameron delivers a knockout blow to a struggling Corbyn

From our UK edition

This could have been a tricky PMQs for David Cameron. Instead, it will be remembered for Cameron ventriloquising his mother and telling Corbyn 'put on a proper suit, do up your tie and sing the national anthem'. What gave this jibe its potency, is that it sums up what a lot of voters think of the Labour leader. It was not quite as Flashmanesque as it sounds. For it came in response to a Labour front bench heckle asking what Cameron’s mother would say about cuts in Oxfordshire. Even before Cameron floored Corbyn with that line, the Labour leader was struggling. He chose to go on the NHS and the junior doctors’ strike. But even on this subject, he couldn’t make any headway. Worryingly for Labour. Corbyn’s PMQs performances are—if anything—getting worse.

Charles Moore

David Cameron has dropped his references to a ‘reformed’ EU. Will ‘safer’ be next?

From our UK edition

Obviously the 198 business leaders who signed a letter to the Times yesterday explaining why Britain should remain in the EU are too busy and important to read what appears under their names, but surely someone in their enormous ‘comms’ teams should have pointed out to them that they were directly repeating David Cameron’s current slogan ‘Britain will be stronger, safer and better off remaining a member of the EU’. Might it not compromise their independence as top executives if they let words be put into their mouths by a politician? Irritated, I tried to order my stockbroker to divest my portfolio of all shares in all the companies concerned, but unfortunately found that I had not got any. By the way, Mr Cameron’s slogan has already changed.

Tuesday

Tom Goodenough

Today in audio: Philip Davies and David Cameron’s ‘loving hug’

From our UK edition

Bernard Hogan-Howe was up in front of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee today where Keith Vaz did his best to soften up the Met Police commissioner at the start of the hearing by asking him for his views on the EU referendum. But Hogan-Howe said he wasn't getting involved: Whilst on the subject of Lord Bramall and Lord Brittan, Hogan-Howe resolutely maintained his position.

Tom Goodenough

David Cameron on Boris: He’s a ‘great friend’ but he’s wrong

From our UK edition

David Cameron must be getting fed up with questions about Boris by now but unfortunately for the Prime Minister they're not going to go away anytime soon. That much was clear in his public press conference this morning. The PM managed to avoid making direct reference to Boris during his speech, in which he again played up the fact he has no vested interests involved with needing to fight another election, unlike his old friend. But after being asked directly whether he was referring to Boris in his speech in Parliament, Cameron could ignore the thorn in his side no longer. Here's what he said about Boris: 'I have huge respect for Boris as a politician and a great friend of mine, he's a fantastic Mayor of London. I think he's got a lot to give to the Conservative party and to this country.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Cameron takes aim at Boris in pointed Commons statement

From our UK edition

The main difference between David Cameron’s statement to MPs on his EU deal and the two statements he has already given on the matter was that this one had added digs at Boris Johnson. Quite a few of them, in fact. The Prime Minister is clearly furious with the Mayor of London for his weekend announcement that he will be campaigning to leave, and inserted a number of extremely pointed lines into his feedback to the Commons that showed what he thought of Johnson’s decision. He ruled out the suggestion - one made by Boris himself - that voting Leave now would teach Europe a lesson and enable a better renegotiation before a second referendum.

The Spectator

Cameron fights back: his full statement on the EU deal

From our UK edition

I have spent the last nine months setting out the four areas where we need reform and meeting with all 27 other EU Heads of State and government to reach an agreement that delivers concrete reforms in all four areas. Let me take each in turn. First, British jobs and British business depend on being able to trade with Europe on a level playing field. So we wanted new protections for our economy; to safeguard the pound; to promote our industries – including our financial services industries; to protect British taxpayers from the costs of problems in the Eurozone and to ensure we have a full say over the rules of the single market, while remaining outside the Eurozone. And we got all of those things.

Steerpike

Tory MP heckles Jeremy Corbyn: ‘who are you?’

From our UK edition

Although the Conservative party is currently divided over the EU, some Tory MPs are still managing to remember to attack the opposition party -- rather than their colleagues. Today the Commons returned firmly to 'Punch and Judy' politics following Cameron's EU statement in the Commons. As Jeremy Corbyn gave his reply, Chris Pincher -- the MP for Tamworth -- couldn't resist having the last laugh. The incident occurred as the Labour leader discussed his recent trip to Brussels: Jeremy Corbyn: Last week -- like him -- I was in Brussels, meeting with heads of government and leaders of European socialist parties, one of whom said to me... Chris Pincher: Who are you?

Isabel Hardman

Cameron faces tricky day in the House of Commons over EU deal

From our UK edition

David Cameron faces MPs today after returning from Brussels with his European Union reform deal. At 3.30 in the Commons, the Prime Minister will give a statement on the outcome of the European Council meeting, and take questions from MPs, including many on his own side who think the deal is a load of tosh. It will be interesting to see how many of them choose to tell him that, and what sort of language they use. There is a risk that this referendum campaign becomes very personal and furious, even while everyone involved is pontificating about the importance of the Tory party getting along well after the vote.

Steerpike

Has Cameron scored an own goal? EU referendum clashes with ‘Independence Day’

From our UK edition

David Cameron's decision to hold the EU referendum on 23 June has already caused upset in some camps. While the SNP complain that it clashes with the Holyrood elections, Glastonbury festival goers are put out that they will have to organise a postal vote in order to have their say. Now there is more trouble ahead for Cameron. As if the Remain camp didn't have enough to deal with now BoJo and Gove have backed Out, Independence Day 2 is to be released in UK cinemas the day after the referendum -- on 24 June. This means that for weeks in the run-up to the vote there will be billboards and adverts promoting 'Independence Day'. In the trailer for the film, the public are informed: 'today you will once again be fighting for our freedom'.

Sunday

James Forsyth

This referendum is now a battle between two visions of the future

From our UK edition

George Osborne’s plan for this referendum was to turn it into a question of the future versus the past, for both the country and the Tory party. He wanted the voters to see the Out campaign as a bunch of people who wanted to take Britain back to a bygone era. Inside the Tory party, his aim was to have the talent and the ambition on the IN side with only old war horses and the passed over and bitter on the other side. But the events of the past 36 hours have blown this plan off course. Out now has one of the most popular politicians in the country on board in Boris, as well as one of the intellectual driving forces behind Tory modernisation and the party’s new social justice agenda in Gove.

James Forsyth

Blow to Cameron as Boris backs Brexit

From our UK edition

David Cameron used to always remind people who asked him about what Boris would do in the referendum that the London Mayor had never advocated Britain leaving the European Union. But tonight, Boris will do exactly that. He will become the highest profile politician to back Brexit. Boris’s decision shakes up this referendum campaign. The IN campaign have long seen a swing to IN among Tory voters as the key to them securing a decisive victory. They believed that Cameron and pretty much all the Tory party endorsing the deal would provide that. But they cautioned that if Boris went the other way, the Cameron effect would be pretty much cancelled out—and that is what has happened.

Douglas Murray

The EU ‘deal’ is a political stitch-up

From our UK edition

Almost everything about the EU debate so far has been a fraud.  The ‘Remain’ campaign has lied to the public about what David Cameron achieved in his ‘renegotiation’.  They have lied about the consequences of leaving the EU, in the hope of terrifying us into staying.  And now they are rushing us towards a referendum because the later they leave it the less likely it is that they will get the answer they want.  An innocent might rub their eyes in disbelief that a Conservative Prime Minister with the connivance of nearly the entire political class could be trying to bounce us into such a decision. But there it is.

Isabel Hardman

Cameron makes last-minute appeal to Boris to campaign for Remain

From our UK edition

David Cameron rehearsed many of his arguments about his deal on the Marr Show this morning, but he also made a fresh appeal to Boris Johnson to back the In side. He said: 'To Boris, I would say to Boris what I say to everybody else which is we would be safer, we will be stronger, we will be better off inside the EU. I think the prospect of linking arms with Nigel Farage and George Galloway and taking a leap into the dark is the wrong step for our country and if Boris and others really care about being able to get things done in our world then the EU is one of the ways in which we get them done.' This was a risky appeal, as now if the Mayor backs Out then it will be in spite of the Prime Minister's last-minute pleading.

Isabel Hardman

Pro-Brexit ministers unpick Cameron’s EU deal

From our UK edition

Cabinet ministers are now free to campaign in the EU referendum, and inevitably the pro-Brexit bunch have all given interviews or penned pieces in the press about why they want to leave the European Union. Chris Grayling today tells the Sunday Times that David Cameron’s renegotiation ‘doesn’t go far enough’ and can be overturned by the European Parliament, and points out that for all the fuss about the emergency brake on migrant benefits, the introduction of the living wage will ‘boost the attraction of Britain as a place to come and work’. He also dismisses the assurances that Cameron is planning to set out on the sovereignty of Parliament, saying that Britain is ‘bound by treaty to the supremacy of European law’.

James Forsyth

Contrary to what Cameron and Osborne say, Gove hasn’t been an Outer for 30 years

From our UK edition

David Cameron and George Osborne have responded to Michael Gove’s decision to campaign for Out by saying that he has wanted to leave the EU for thirty years. But as Vote Leave are pointing out, Gove has not been an Outer for that long. When he was a journalist, Gove was actually arguing that Britain should, ultimately, stay in the EU. In 1996, he wrote in The Times that ‘It is still in Britain’s interest to stay in the EU.’ So, why are Cameron and Osborne saying that Gove has been an Outer for thirty years?

Saturday

James Forsyth

What was said at the EU referendum Cabinet

From our UK edition

At Cabinet this morning, every minister spoke in strict order of Cabinet seniority. This meant that Michael Gove was the first person to make the case for Out. I’m told that his argument to Cabinet was essentially the same as the hugely powerful statement he put out afterwards, which you can read in full here. The theme of the Cabinet discussion was, broadly, the trade-off between sovereignty and access to the free market. According to one of those present, where you fell on that question determined your position in the debate. One IN supporting Cabinet minister tells me that Oliver Letwin was the most persuasive speaker for that side of the argument.

Isabel Hardman

And we’re off! David Cameron announces EU referendum on 23 June

From our UK edition

As expected, David Cameron has just confirmed that the EU referendum will be on Thursday 23 June. The Prime Minister confirmed - again - in his statement in Downing Street that he will be recommending an 'In' vote. The Prime Minister's statement was largely a reprise of his key themes from last night. He said that 'the choice goes to the heart of the kind of country we want to be' and argued that 'this is about how we trade with neighbouring countries to create jobs, prosperity and security for our families'. He also repeated his line from his Brussels statement about those who want to leave being unable to set out an alternative to Britain staying 'in a reformed Europe'. Members of the Cabinet are now leaving Downing Street, free to campaign as they wish.