Cameron said he’d back Remain three years before vote
His EU talks were just ‘killing time’, reveals Clarke
DAVID Cameron told Ken Clarke he would back staying in the European Union more than three years before the vote, it has emerged.
Mr Clarke said the former prime minister told him he ‘intended to advocate remaining in the EU’ in January 2013, when he announced the timing of the referendum.
The revelation exposes as a sham both Mr Cameron’s renegotiations with Europe and his claim – made repeatedly in the run-up to the vote – that he would consider backing Leave if he did not get the deal he wanted from Brussels.
He said time and again in the years before the referendum that he ‘ruled nothing out’ – suggesting that he might support the campaign to quit the EU. It was only in February this year, after negotiations were complete, that he finally backed Remain.
Writing in his memoir, Kind Of Blue, Mr Clarke reveals his ‘fury’ at what he saw as Mr Cameron’s ‘foolish and extremely risky decision’ in early 2013 to announce a referendum to take place by the end of 2017.
The former chancellor says he was ‘shocked’ to read in the newspapers that the prime minister had made the announcement without consulting his Cabinet.
‘I thought this was reckless and irresponsible. I had always been opposed to the idea that a referendum is a useful way of taking decisions on hugely complex political and diplomatic issues,’ he writes.
‘A quick campaign and a broad question which obscures a myriad of sub-issues about the role of Britain in the world and the best base for our future economy has always seemed to me to be reckless.’
Mr Clarke said he went to speak to Mr Cameron, and from their conversation it was ‘obvious David had taken [the decision] mainly for reasons of party management’ and to placate Eurosceptic backbenchers.
‘He also saw it as a way of reducing votes for Nigel Farage and his UK Independence Party at the General Election in 2015,’ he wrote. Mr Cameron told Mr Clarke that the announcement would ‘calm the whole issue’ and ‘bring the constant bickering to an end’. ‘David further explained he intended to delay the vote whilst he embarked upon a process of reform of our relationship with the EU,’ the sen- ior Tory said. ‘ He was clear that he intended to advocate remaining in the Union, but he thought that the majority would be increased in the referendum if he could illustrate that he had achieved improvements in our relationship with Europe.’
Mr Clarke criticises Mr Cameron for being ‘remarkably vague’ about what reforms he wanted – saying
‘Reckless and irresponsible’
the former prime minister tried to ‘calm me down’ by showing him details of a speech.
He is also damning about the renegotiation, which he says Mr Cameron saw as a ‘tactical device’. ‘David had never really had a clear idea of what he wanted to get out of his EU reform negotiations, they had mainly been a tactical device to kill the time,’ he writes. Mr Clarke says EU negotiators were ‘taking it for granted’ during the campaign that the UK would vote to stay in the Brussels club.
And the former minister is damning about what Mr Cameron secured, which he describes as a ‘ peculiar deal’ on tax credits which it was ‘not clear’ would reduce migration.
He also criticises George Osborne for making ‘extremely simplistic presentations’ of the economic arguments for staying in.
The then-chancellor’s claims that an emergency budget would be needed after a Leave vote, in which taxes would go up and spending would be slashed were ‘obviously absurd’, he says.
Mr Cameron’s decision to hold the referendum was ‘the worst political mistake made by any British prime minister in my lifetime,’ Mr Clarke concludes. A spokesman for Mr Cameron did not respond to a request for comment.
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