In his statement to the Commons this afternoon, David Cameron confirmed that ministers will be free to campaign for Britain to leave the European Union – and he gave a hint about when the referendum might be, too. The Prime Minister told the Chamber that he couldn’t guarantee agreement at February’s European Council summit, but:
‘If [agreement] is possible, the I’m keen to get on and hold a referendum. We shouldn’t do it precipitately, I’ve looked at previous precedents, I note that when Labour held a referendum in 1975, there was only a month between the completion of the legislation and the referendum. I don’t think that’s enough.
‘When the government I led in the last five years, when we had the referendum on the alternative vote, I think there was less than three months and I don’t think that was enough, so I think we should be looking for a period longer than that.
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