Take the EU debate beyond Westminster

There is an old adage at Westminster that your opponents sit in front of you while your enemies are seated behind. David Cameron must have felt the force of that observation yesterday as he made his statement on the EU referendum. Most support for the Prime Minister’s campaign to stay in Europe came from Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP. His most vocal opponents were on the Conservative benches, among them Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, who declared for Leave at the weekend. Lurking in the shadows were the half-dozen or so Cabinetrank ministers who will also campaign to end this country’s 41-year EU membership at the referendum on June 23.

It was apparent from this Commons debate how difficult Mr Cameron’s position in his own party has become. Three years after he set out the failings of the EU in his Bloomberg speech, he is now required to become its most ardent champion without having engineered the reforms he said were essential. This has placed him at odds with more than 100 Tory MPs and with many party activists who have long harboured deep antipathy towards Europe.

We have argued before that this debate needs to be conducted amicably to avoid the Tory party ripping itself apart. But the exchanges in the Commons yesterday did not fill us with optimism. Mr Cameron called Mr Johnson’s suggestion that there might be a second referendum if Britain voted to leave as “for the birds”. Meanwhile, the disdain with which many of his colleagues treated his claim to have fundamentally altered Britain’s relationship with the EU will make it hard to hold the party together. Dark briefings emanate from the Remain team suggesting that Mr Johnson’s decision was motivated principally by his calculation of his own leadership chances.

Even if it is true that the referendum was promised because of divisions in the Conservative Party, the Tories must not to accuse each other of bad faith, something that will only benefit Labour. To that end, the Cabinet ministers campaigning to leave have said they will not argue with their colleagues directly. But this must not stop the key figures in both camps taking the argument out of Westminster to the nation. This is no longer just about the Tory party, but the future of the country. Mr Cameron called this a gigantic democratic exercise in accountability. He was right.