Britain’s new ambassadors
The EU renegotiation has made an unlikely diplomat of David Cameron
ALMOST a decade ago a new, ruddy-faced Conservative Party leader urged his comrades to stop “banging on about Europe”. David Cameron was right: his party’s neurosis was making it look clammy and xenophobic. He tried to kill the subject by marginalising it and, whenever his MPs became restless, flashing some Eurosceptic ankle. Hence in 2009 he pulled his party out of the European People’s Party (the EPP, the continent’s main centre-right grouping); in 2011 he tried to block a pact to save the euro zone; and in 2013 he pledged to renegotiate Britain’s membership and put the result to a referendum within four years. Thanks to this last gambit, Mr Cameron must now switch positions: having long played footsie with Eurosceptics and confronted his continental partners, today he must take on the former and flirt with the latter, especially in the build-up to the summit on February 18th at which the 27 other members of the European Council will discuss the draft renegotiation published on February 2nd.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Britain’s new ambassadors”
From the February 13th 2016 edition
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