Cameron deal a failure declares Lord Howard

FORMER Tory leader Lord Howard last night said David Cameron’s attempted EU reforms have been ‘met with failure’.

Backing Brexit, the peer said a vote by Britain to sever ties with Brussels would be necessary to ‘shock’ European leaders ‘out of their complacency’.

Lord Howard employed the young PM as an advisor when he was Home Secretary two decades ago. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, he outlined his hopes that the man who succeeded him as party leader would have achieved ‘fundamental reform’.

‘It is not his fault that these efforts have been met with failure,’ he said. ‘It is the fault of those EU leaders so mesmerised by their outdated ambition to create a country called Europe that they cannot contemplate any loosening of the ties that bind member states.

‘There is just one thing that just might shake Europe’s leaders out of their complacency: the shock of a vote by the British people to leave.’

Lord Howard claimed that if Britain voted to quit the EU, there would be a ‘significant chance they would ask us to think again’.

His comments came as former foreign secretary David Owen warned that staying in the EU is dangerous for Britain’s economy and security.

The peer, who was one of the Gang of Four who left the Labour party to found the SDP, said Mr Cameron failed in his negotiations and condemned the lack of concessions on free movement of EU migrants.

Calling for Britain to leave the ‘dysfunctional’ bloc, he said it would ‘re-energise’ the country and allow us to make all our own laws. He also claimed the eurozone is too large and needs to be restructured, while alleging that EU diplomatic blunders triggered Russian aggression in Ukraine. The 77-year-old is the most senior Left-wing figure yet to back Brexit. The peer, who was in the foreign office from 1977 to 1979, was once deeply pro-European.

But he has joined the campaign group Vote Leave and wrote a book explaining his reasons.

In a statement on Wednesday night, Lord Owen said: ‘There are many positive aspects to leaving the EU. We will make our own laws again in our own Parliament.

‘We will rediscover the skills of blue-water diplomacy and rise to the challenge of global markets. It could be the spark we need to reenergise our nation: a challenge and an opportunity.’

He went on: ‘To remain in the EU is in my judgment a more dangerous option for British security in its deepest sense – economic, political, military and social – than is being admitted or even discussed in the wake of Cameron’s failed negotiations. ‘Europe has moved away from us. Its elite chose a different path long ago and it is not a path the UK ever wished to follow.’

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday, he said: ‘Frankly the eurozone is much too large. There are a number of countries in it that will not be able to be sustained in it.’

On the Ukraine crisis, he said the EU made ‘quite considerable diplomatic mistakes’ which ‘actually triggered this war’. The language in the EU–Ukraine agreement was ‘inflammatory’ and ‘very foolish’.

Meanwhile former Tory defence secretary Sir John Nott said the EU would ‘disintegrate’ because of ‘uncontrolled migration’ and a collapsing euro.

He dismissed claims by the Remain camp that staying in the EU would be better for Britain’s security.