Referendum to overshadow Queen’s Speech
HILE Mr Cameron frets, his Tory foes are thrilled by the uncertainties and potential opportunities the referendum debate has bred. “This has given me a new lease of life,” another minister said. “There is a feeling that politics is changing very fast.”
Senior Tory sources say that Mr Cameron has chosen “social mobility” as the theme of next week’s Queen’s Speech. He wants to show that his Government is still in business despite the referendum and dedicated to improving the prospects of the less well-off. MPs are expecting the announcement of measures to try to improve edu- cation and job opportunities for the disadvantaged.
A long-trailed plan to force migrants from outside the EU to pay more towards NHS treatment is also anticipated. Yet even that measure risks exacerbating the anger at the far higher migration levels from within the EU.
Mr Cameron’s pared-down programme next week can only intensify the suspicion that true political combat has deserted Westminster, at least for the duration of the referendum campaign.
PRIME Minister’s Questions feels increasingly like irrelevant posturing compared with the vicious scrap for every vote being fought out in the wider electorate over the country’s European future.
With his narrow Commons majority and the referendum contest delicately balanced, Mr Cameron appears ready to do anything to duck out of a fight with his backbench rebels. Westminster veteran Nigel Dodds, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party in the Commons, had an instructive take on the Government’s queasiness about its legislative programme.
“My view is that the current Tory leadership is traumatised by the fate of John Major, which they witnessed as youthful political spectators,” he wrote in a newspaper article. “As a result they have resolved never to fight and die in the Commons. This is a mistake.”
Mr Cameron’s biggest worry is that it is not the parliamentary tussle over his legislative plan that is the greatest threat to his position. The political fray has moved from the Commons floor to the doorsteps, the school gates, the pubs, the kitchen tables and wherever else the referendum debate is being vigorously thrashed out. And there too will his ultimate fate be decided.