Why is David Cameron so confident that he’ll get what he wants from his renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with Europe? Today on the Andrew Marr Show he managed to advocate Britain voting ‘yes’ in the 2017 referendum before he’s even started changing the terms of the membership voters would be backing. His reasoning for this was firstly that ‘I’m someone who has a very positive, optimistic plan for this country’ (a convenient contrast with Ukip), and secondly because he has a good track record of getting what he wants in Europe.
One of the achievements that the Prime Minister always cites when he talks about his ability to achieve the changes he wants is the EU Budget cut. This always causes a little bit of spluttering in eurosceptic quarters, as the Prime Minister seems to have conveniently forgotten that it was a rebellion in the Commons that he and the whips got very aerated about that gave him the 'mandate' in the negotiations to get what he wanted.
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