David Cameron and Lynton Crosby are holding a meeting with Conservative MPs this week to discuss 2015 strategy, I understand. The party held a similar meeting with Andrew Cooper in January. One of the major topics that is likely to come up from the floor is whether the party should be trying to get legislation on an EU referendum into parliament at some point.
There is of course already an opportunity for the party to do this, as there is a backbench bill already before parliament proposing just that. It’s from John Baron, who was the first Tory to break ranks and criticise David Cameron’s EU referendum pledge, writing on Coffee House that without legislation, the party would suffer at the hands of voters not quite ready to trust politicians on Europe. The United Kingdom Membership of the European Union (Referendum) Bill has its second reading in the Commons on 26 April.
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