Europe

‘I’m a man with a plan,’ David Cameron told the Conservative party conference in 2008. Now the Prime Minister is struggling to give the impression he does have a plan for dealing with the Europe problem in his party: and he needs one, because things are going to get a lot stickier. The furore around tomorrow’s Queen’s Speech amendment is in many ways rather amusing because however backbenchers, PPSs and ministers vote, it doesn’t change a thing outside the Commons chamber. It simply says the Tory party wishes there had been an EU referendum bill in the Queen’s Speech. For all the criticisms that he’s running behind his party on

In a firecracker of an interview on the Andrew Marr Show, Michael Gove confirmed that if an EU referendum was held today he would vote out. But he followed this by saying to James Landale that he backed the Prime Minister’s plans to renegotiate and hoped that a satisfactory form of membership could be agreed. Significantly, Gove indicated that David Cameron would set out the Conservative ‘negotiating platform’ before the next election. This has been a key demand of Euro-sceptic Conservatives but one that Cameron has resisted. He is reluctant to provide anything akin to a renegotiation scorecard. Gove’s intervention changes the terms of debate. It means that every Conservative

As expected, the backbench Tory campaign for an EU referendum bill started as soon as the Queen’s Speech proved not to contain one. The first battle is over an amendment expressing regret which John Baron, who is leading the charge on this, has tabled. The amendment, to the motion welcoming the Queen’s Speech, simply reads: ‘Respectfully regrets that an EU referendum bill was not included in the gracious speech.’ This means that all Tory MPs who want a referendum, but in a different form, such as the mandate referendum that Bernard Jenkin and others have pushed for, can still sign the amendment. Baron tells me that he hasn’t decided whether

The latest extracts of the Andrew Adonis’ book on the 2010 coalition negotiations couldn’t have been better designed to stir up Tory backbench bad feeling to Nick Clegg. Adonis claims that in the final phone calls between Clegg and Brown, the Lib Dem leader kept stressing—you’ve guessed it—Europe. Adonis reports that Clegg told Brown:  ‘Following our conversation this afternoon I’m basically finding out how far I can push the Conservatives on Europe. I genuinely take to heart what you said about that. We need some sanity on Europe. We can’t seek to renegotiate. I’m trying my best…’ I think this illustrates two things. First, how ideologically committed Clegg is to the

The dust is settling from the County Council elections and, crucially, the Tory party seems to have stayed steady. Yes, David Davis has had a pop at the number of Old Etonians surrounding the PM and 20 MPs have called for a mandate referendum. But there is no sense of mass panic or revolt. Partly this is because David Cameron had already started doing the things he was going to be told to do after this result. As one Downing Street source remarks, ‘the shift is already well under way.’ He points to the tougher measures on immigration and welfare coming up in the Queen’s Speech and Number 10’s new

It is one of the paradoxes of modern British politics that in the post-war era the power and hold of political parties have declined and our system has become more presidential. But the two most electorally successful leaders of this era have both been deposed by their respective parties. This has created problems for both parties, as today’s Sunday Politics with Andrew Neil demonstrated. After John Reid had been on to discuss Tony Blair’s comments on Ed Miliband, Grant Shapps was up to be questioned on Margaret Thatcher’s legacy for the Tories. Shapps was reluctant to declare that the Tories are a Thatcherite party. Trying to suggest that it is

When Václav Havel first visited the United Kingdom as Czechoslovak President in March 1990, Margaret Thatcher hosted a dinner in his honour at 10 Downing Street. By then, Havel’s team, populated partly by chain-smoking dissidents, had been in active politics for only a couple of months. The Prime Minister did not hesitate to use the opportunity to coach the group of unlikely Czechoslovak leaders. ‘She was very direct in giving us advice about economic transition, about what we should and should not be doing,’ remembers Havel’s former press secretary, Michael Žantovský, who is currently serving as the Czech Ambassador in London. As last week’s street parties in Glasgow, Liverpool and

‘Délégation Royaume Uni. Salle 4’ announces a scruffy piece of paper projected onto the black and white television screens of the Centre Charlemagne. The journalists hurry upstairs for the latest from Mr Bernard Ingham, Mrs Thatcher’s press secretary. Mr Ingham is not conspicuously communautaire. He tells us who spoke in the session — Mr Lubbers, Herr Kohl, Mrs Thatcher and ‘Mr Papandreou — I always call him Mr Papadopoulos’. A nodding acquaintance with recent Greek history would have made Mr Ingham realise that such a slip, though easier on the tongue, is as politically uncomfortable as calling M. Mitterrand ‘Marshal Pétain’. But then Mr Ingham is not paid to spread

It now looks almost certain that Andrew Mitchell will be our next EU Commissioner in 2014. The job was not advertised and the backroom selection process remains a mystery. In the wake of the Plebgate row, though, we can make an educated guess as to why, according to the FT, Downing Street has asked Mitchell ‘to consider’ the offer. This would be no ordinary consolation prize for Mitchell. Downing Street has big hopes for Mitchell in the role. Senior Whitehall sources indicate that Britain will be pushing hard for a big economic portfolio when the new commission is appointed next year. The aim is to make the case for financial