One other area besides immigration where Tory MPs want their leader to go further than he feels he can is, unsurprisingly, Europe. There is growing pressure within the party for the Prime Minister to get legislation on the floor of the House of Commons which would guarantee a referendum in the next Parliament. This is what Bernard Jenkin, who favours a referendum sooner than 2015, has to say:
‘The Prime Minister’s veto in 2011 gave his poll ratings a great fillip, but that veto was just ignored. They just decided to go ahead with the Fiscal Union Treaty anyway but without the UK. And the UK did not achieve any safeguards to protect UK banking and financial services which the PM was then demanding. This year, the PM managed to get a marginal cut in the EU budget, but the European Parliament has decided to block the cut, and the UK’s contributions to the EU will continue to increase by billions per year.
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