Thread: Cameron Facing Rebellion Over EU Referendum Vote

David Cameron facing frontbench rebellion over EU referendum vote

Tory MPs likely to defy No 10 as prime minister abandons attempt at compromise ahead of Commons debate

Nicholas Watt
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 20 October 2011 16.08 EDT


George Eustice, the prime minister’s former spokesman, was being lined up by the government to table a 'helpful' amendment but defied No 10. Photograph: Teri Pengilley

David Cameron is bracing himself for the biggest rebellion since he took office, with possible frontbench resignations, when Tory MPs defy No 10 to vote in favour of a referendum on Britain's EU membership on Monday.

As ministers and their aides lined up to tell the chief whip, Patrick McLoughlin, that Downing Street had badly mishandled the debate, No 10 sources indicated that Cameron has abandoned attempts to agree a compromise.

Downing Street threw in the towel when George Eustice, the prime minister's former spokesman who was being lined up by the government to table a "helpful" amendment, defied his former boss.

Eustice tabled an amendment calling on the coalition to publish a white paper in the next two years setting out which powers ministers would repatriate from Brussels. The government would then renegotiate the UK's relationship with the EU and hold a referendum on the outcome.

One No 10 source said the prime minister agrees with the Eustice amendment, but cannot support it – and would whip his MPs to vote against it – because it would be unacceptable to the Liberal Democrats.

"If the prime minister supported George Eustice's amendment that would mean the end of the coalition and we would not be holding a referendum. We would be holding a general election."

Eustice indicated on Thursday night that he was "minded" to support the original motion which calls simply for a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU.

Senior Tories said that Downing Street ran into trouble when it imposed a three-line whip on Tory MPs requiring them to vote against a motion, tabled by the Commons backbench business committee, which calls for a referendum to be held on Britain's membership of the EU.

MPs were given the message at a meeting of the 1922 committee at 5pm on Wednesday by a whip who said that the debate would go ahead, as planned, on Thursday next week.

Within 30 minutes, a nervous No 10 brought forward the vote by three days, to Monday, to ensure that Cameron and William Hague could be present.

By next Thursday, the prime minister and the foreign secretary are due to be in Australia for the Commonwealth heads of government meeting.

In a sign of the panic in Downing Street, aides failed to brief key government supporters who had been trying to shore up support for Cameron. One senior figure, who was not told until 7pm on Wednesday, was telling MPs to calm down as he denied reports that the date of the debate had been changed.

With increasing numbers of Tory MPs signing up to the motion, one parliamentary aide said he was prepared to resign so he could support the referendum.

Stewart Jackson, parliamentary aide to Northern Ireland secretary Owen Paterson, was one of three parliamentary private secretaries and one junior minister considering their positions.

The chaos in government circles was highlighted when a prominent Eurosceptic backbencher, who was singled out by the leadership as a figure who could table a "helpful" amendment, announced that he would be voting in favour of the referendum.

Chris Heaton-Harris, a former MEP, feels so strongly that he is curtailing a trip to Jordan in order to fly home to vote against the government on Monday.

Ministers are hoping that Cameron may be helped if many MPs table amendments, even though the speaker is unlikely to accept any of them. There is a hope that the tabling of a series of amendments will "muddy the waters".

Any amendment has to include a commitment to a referendum because the clerks would rule that any other wording constituted a "wrecking" amendment.

But the government does not want the word "referendum" to appear unless it is consistent with its policy, which was recently established in law. This is that a referendum would be held only if UK sovereignty is passed to Brussels.

One senior MP was scathing, saying: "The government has mismanaged the whole thing.

"They should have let the vote go ahead on a quiet Thursday, make it a free vote because the debate is being held after a petition from the public, and say it will listen to the views of the MPs because the vote is only an advisory one.

"Instead, the prime minister has made a great show of bringing the vote forward and putting William Hague into play."

One member of the "payroll" said: "They have really screwed this up. They have handled it badly. Ministers and PPSs will stay with the government now because there is no great treaty change at the moment.

"But if there is the big change then the government can't expect us to keep quiet."

Downing Street sources said it would have been wrong to impose a lighter, one-line whip. This would have encouraged the "payroll" to stay away and the government could have lost.

The prime minister thought it was better to be clear about the government's position, by imposing a three-line whip, and allowing a debate to take place.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011 ... -rebellion

Steve Richards: Eurosceptics are stirring again and there's panic in Downing Street

They have leapt on the new fashion for petitions to step up the pace and intensity in this parliament

Thursday, 20 October 2011

Power to the people is always one of the most potent slogans in British politics. No leader would enter an election arguing in favour of less power for the people. Empowerment can take many forms, most of them ill-defined. David Cameron's self-proclaimed mission aims to redistribute power away from the centre to the people. Labour too seeks to empower. And indeed sought to do so when in power.

In the case of both Labour in the final years of Tony Blair and the Coalition now, attempts at empowerment extend to direct democracy. "Let the people speak!" is part of the new engagement. Again, no leader would dare to argue the opposite.

As a result some people are speaking out by signing petitions, an activity endorsed with great initial enthusiasm by their rulers. At first the positive excitement in government circles was unbounded. Politicians genuinely do want to make new connections with an increasingly alienated electorate. However, within 10 minutes the enthusiasm for petitions within government disappeared and was replaced by another familiar emotion in politics: panic.

It is not much of an exaggeration to suggest that No 10 is close to panic over next week's debate on Europe. The debate in relation to a referendum has arisen because a Commons' backbench committee cited the number of petitions on the issue. The envisaged referendum would put forward several options including withdrawal from the EU and a partial exit that recognised a trading relationship.

No 10's first instinct was to impose a three-line whip against the proposal, but even MPs highly supportive of Cameron tell me that whipping against a motion triggered by petitions goes against the whole spirit of letting the people speak. Whipping arrangements are being reconsidered and No 10 is exploring the scope for amendments that might allow sceptics to express their concerns in a less spectacular fashion. Again MPs point out such a move would be against the spirit of the petitions.

Whatever the Government decides to do there will be no referendum in this Parliament. But that is not the point. The Euro-sceptics are stirring again and as they do so they highlight several strange, fragile dynamics with the Conservative wing of the Coalition.

The first relates to the relationship between Cameron and the right of his party. Cameron is a Eurosceptic, but is not sceptical enough for some of his colleagues. More widely, the Prime Minister leads a coalition of the radical right, but not one that is right-wing enough for elements in his party. This leads parts of the BBC to assert that Cameron has a problem with the right because he is a centrist One Nation Tory, a highly agreeable interpretation for the PM.

It is more complicated than that. Rather like John Major in the 1990s, who privatised the railways, kept public spending dangerously low and opted out of the euro and the Social Chapter, Cameron has instigated unprecedented spending cuts, an overhaul of the NHS and promised referendums on new EU treaties. Evidently both Major in the past and Cameron now support policies identified with the right, but ones that were not then, and are not now, right-wing enough. Again Major was a Eurosceptic and so is Cameron, but in both cases not enough.

We now have the odd contortion in which Cameron and William Hague are forced to defend Britain's membership of the EU, in the same way that Major had to defend the idea that membership of the Euro could not be ruled out forever. even though he was the one that had ruled it out at Maastricht.

Meanwhile, thoughtful, non-pugilistic Eurosceptics such as George Eustice, who used to be Cameron's press secretary, are also thrown into a degree of panic about what to do in next week's debate. Eustice had been pursuing a more long-term strategy, seeking a renegotiation of Britain's membership rather than full withdrawal. Cameron could live with that, at least in the short term. But other Eurosceptic MPs have leapt on the new fashion for petitions to step up the pace and intensity of scepticism. He might have no choice but to follow.

There is no precise proposal like the single currency in the early 1990s on which the sceptics can focus, but Europe is the great wrecker of parties in British politics. Even if voters share a party's disdain for Europe they do not automatically support it and can quickly turn away. Labour pledged to withdraw from the EU in its 1983 manifesto and was slaughtered. Neil Kinnock's only victory in a national poll came in the 1988 European elections when the Conservatives fought a populist sceptical campaign. William Hague spent most his time in the 1997 election pledging to save the pound and was slaughtered even more heavily than Labour in 1983.

The Eurosceptics have been proven right on some issues, but their fundamentalism does not chime with voters even at moments of partial vindication. Their reappearance in such numbers now is a reminder that Cameron has not greatly challenged the Eurosceptic right because he partially agrees with them.

The deification of petitions is the cause for the new excitement, not any event in Europe. On the Cabinet Office website the fashionable form of direct democracy is described with the objective innocence of an official: "E-petitions is an easy way for you to influence government policy in the UK. You can create an e-petition about anything that the Government is responsible for and if it gets at least 100,000 signatures, it will be eligible for debate in the House of Commons."

Sometimes a mountain of signatures can lead to dignified outcomes, such as the debate earlier this week on Hillsborough. But mostly petitions are a crude device for short-sighted, self-interested groups. Under the last Labour government ministers had finally dared to propose an experimental road pricing scheme, so experimental most drivers would not have noticed. Virtually every driver in the country seemed to sign a Downing Street petition against the move, even though motorists would have benefited in the long term. No 10 panicked and dropped its tentative experiment. No 10 is panicking now.

When Gordon Brown was recorded describing Gillian Duffy as a bigot during the last election, it struck me that while voters are allowed to abuse politicians, politicians can never abuse voters. That does not mean politicians must dance to every tune composed by a highly selective group of angry voters, often organised by a powerful pressure group. Petitions are a lousy way to make policy.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/co ... 72924.html

DAVID CAMERON RUSHES THROUGH EU REFERENDUM DEBATE AS HE FACES TORY REVOLT

EU referendum debate is being rushed through by David Cameron so he can attend

Thursday October 20,2011
By Macer Hall, Political Editor
Have your say(111)

THE EU referendum vote was dramatically brought forward by a rattled David Cameron last night in a Â*desperate attempt to undermine a threatened mass revolt.

The historic debate on whether to hold the first official poll on the UK’s EU membership will now take place on Monday, instead of Thursday as previously planned.

But furious MPs claimed the switch was a panic measure designed to stop a Tory revolt over the issue gathering pace.

Rebels will now have little time to persuade colleagues to defy a Government three-line whip, and the move will also hamper an attempt to organise a mass lobby of Parliament.

EU referendum vote has sparked an unprecedented manipulation of backbench business.

Tory MP Peter Bone, a member of the Commons Backbench Business Committee

Tory Euro-sceptics believe the surprise change was a sign ministers are frightened they could lose the vote. One senior backbencher said: “This smacks of panic. The Government is Â*really trying to put the pressure on people not to rebel.â€

Cameron rejects EU referendum call ahead of MPs debate

19 October 2011
Last updated at 14:12 ET
427 comments


David Cameron says Europe should focus on sorting its own problems out

David Cameron has rejected calls for a referendum on Europe ahead of a Commons debate on the subject next week.

At Prime Minister's Questions, he said he shared MPs' frustrations with how the European Union worked but would oppose calls for a vote on whether to quit the EU as it was "not our policy".

Up to 50 Tory MPs could potentially rebel against the government.

The BBC understands the debate has been brought forward by three days to enable senior ministers to attend.

The debate will now be held on 24 October, not 27 October as originally scheduled.

The government requested the switch because both the prime minister and Foreign Secretary William Hague - who will lead for the government in the debate - will be in Australia at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting between 28 and 30 October.

The government would not be bound by the result of the vote, based on a motion by Tory MP David Nuttall, but it could prove politically tricky for the Conservative leadership.

Mr Nuttall's motion calls for a referendum by May 2013 and says the public should have three options put to them in the nationwide vote - keeping the status quo, leaving the EU or reforming the terms of the UK's membership of the European Union.

In the Commons on Wednesday, Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell said the British people were "crying out" for a referendum and urged the PM to "make history and give the British people the chance to vote on our future with the EU".

[b][i]I do not support holding a referendum come what may. That is not our policy and I will not be supporting that motionâ€