Nick Clegg won’t be sitting next to the Prime Minister in the chamber for today’s statement on the EU Council. He has, I’m told, got other meetings to attend.
This absence might be for the best given what Tory MPs are planning to ask Cameron. As Isabel revealed earlier, a string of Eurosceptic backbenchers are planning to push the Prime Minister to go further than he did in his Sunday Telegraph piece. Number 10 is also expecting a question from Liam Fox.
Tory MPs are being reassured that they’ll like what they’ll hear from Cameron on a referendum. It does seem that the statement will be firmer than what William Hague said on the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday morning.
The dwindling band of pro-European Tory MPs is in despair. One complained to me earlier that Cameron is ‘feeding a beast with an insatiable appetite.’ But whatever their objections, it does seem that it is now a question of when not if there’ll be a referendum on Europe.
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