The EU referendum, you read it here first

Many Spectator subscribers, picking up today’s newspapers, will be a bit puzzled. Is it news that David Cameron has come round to the idea of an EU referendum? Haven’t they read that somewhere before? This sensation is called Déjà Lu, and it I’m afraid afflicts all Spectator subscribers. Cameron’s decision to change his position on the EU was revealed by James Forsyth back in May. As so often, his weekly political column gave real-time updates of the No10’s decision-making process as it happened. He wrote then: 

‘A referendum on Europe is the obvious answer. It is one the leadership seems set to embrace. The popularity of Cameron’s EU veto made his circle realise how much of a political asset Euroscepticism could be, if used in the right way. There is also concern in No. 10 that if the Tories don’t offer the public a vote, Labour will.

One source intimately involved in Tory electoral strategy told me recently that a referendum in the next manifesto was ‘basically a certainty’.