There is a massive difference between rebellious talk and actual rebellion. But some of
the language surrounding the 55 percent rule has been striking. When I told one senior MP that David Cameron had said on Sunday that he would whip this vote, the MP shot back defiantly, ‘you
whip if you want to.’
David Davis’s intervention on the issue on the World at One was particularly significant. Having called the 55 percent rule ‘just a terrible formula for government’ it is hard to see how he can support the measure. It is also hard to imagine that a man who picks his fights so carefully would have marched so far up the hill if he was not confident that he had a critical number of foot soldiers behind him. Davis would not want his reputation as the potential rebel Cameron must fear to be lost in the opening months of the Cameron government.
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