How 25% of Cabinet members would vote for Britain to quit EU
A QUARTER of David Cameron’s Cabinet would vote to leave the European Union if a referendum was held now, sources said yesterday.
It is estimated around half a dozen senior Tory ministers want to quit the EU unless the terms of Britain’s membership are renegotiated.
The Prime Minister is now facing fresh pressure to make clear his willingness to quit the union.
The right- wing of his party are also urging him to adopt more “genuine” Tory policies, including allowing the set up of new grammar schools.
Leading Eurosceptic MP Owen Paterson urged Mr Cameron to promise he will trigger the process towards leaving the EU if he wins next May’s general election.
Mr Paterson said invoking Article 50 of the EU Treaty would give Britain two years to negotiate an orderly exit and a new trade- based relationship with Europe, such as that enjoyed by Norway.
Mr Cameron could then offer Britons a choice in the referendum he plans for 2017 – leave the EU or go “full bore” into a political union “in which we are completely subsumed and we have to join the euro”.
Mr Paterson, who was sacked as Environment Secretary in July’s Cabinet reshuffle, said: “It is not so much that we are leaving the EU, as the political project of the EU has left us.”
Britain could have a “spectacular future” outside Europe, free to speak for itself on the world stage, he said in a speech in London to the Eurosceptic pressure group Business for Britain.
Mr Paterson said he believed “very significant numbers of backbench MPs” and an “overwhelming proportion” of Tory grass roots activists share his views. But he urged colleagues not to follow Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless, the former Tory MPs who defected to the UK Independence Party.
“There is one national organisation that can resolve the long- term problems of this country – the Conservative Party,” he warned.
Protest
“Ukip are fine for spotting issues and getting a protest vote. But if you want to resolve this country’s problems, you vote Conservative.
“My clear message is stay in the Tory party because the Tory party is the only vehicle – when it’s genuinely Tory and has genuinely robust policies – that will resolve the problems of the country.”
Earlier, Mr Paterson said his party was not currently offering enough “robust and Conservative policies” of the sort that would win back voters from Ukip.
His Article 50 formula is doomed to rejection however. The Articles in the EU’s Lisbon Treaty enshrines a state’s right to leave. But Tory sources said declaring Britain’s intention to quit would pre- empt the in- out referendum the PM promises to hold after he negotiates new membership terms.
“It should be for the British people to decide in a referendum whether the UK stays in or leaves the EU, not the Prime Minster, MPs or anyone else,” one said.
Critics also said that decisions taken during an Article 50 process require only a majority backing by member states, not unanimity. This would leave the UK unable to veto any proposals.
Meanwhile it emerged that the Tory pressure group Conservative Voice will press Mr Cameron to promise legal change to allow new grammar schools. It plans to fight local campaigns on the issue if the PM rejects the idea.
Mr Cameron has resisted Tory calls to reverse Labour’s ban on their creation, saying he prefers to champion allability academies. But Conservative Voice founder Don Porter said he believed supporting selective schools would attract new voters.