EU referendum: Moaning about Europe is one thing, leaving it is another

It’s a game of chicken. No one wants to be first to declare for Out... they are waiting to see

David Cameron arrives at the European Council in Brussels to take part in the final European Union (EU) summit of the year (AFP/Getty)

The Prime Minister’s mood is active fatalism. He doesn’t know if he can win this European argument, but he has a plan and he is pursuing it with thoroughness and vigour. It is the same mood that he exhibited during the election campaign. The opinion polls suggested the odds were against him, but he, or rather Lynton Crosby, had a plan and he was going to do his best.

We all know what happened that time. I think the same will happen now. Cameron will get the deal that the clever people said he couldn’t get, and then he will win the referendum that the clever people said he shouldn’t have promised. They make faces in Downing Street if anyone makes such sweeping predictions, but that is because it is their job to worry about the downside.

“Have you seen the Daily Mail and The Sun?” they say, when it is suggested that the coalition for leaving the European Union has no big names and few committed supporters in the media. They didn’t like the Mail’s point-by-point rebuttal of John Major’s case for staying in the EU last week, or The Sun’s reporting of the Brussels talks: “Germans sink PM EU hope – Merkel backs migrants”.

But there is a difference between complaining about a thing and doing something about it, as every British person knows. When the moment of decision arrives, I suspect that Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, and Rupert Murdoch, proprietor of The Sun, will hold back if it looks, and I suspect it will, as if the people are going to vote to stay in the EU.

It is possible that this moment is just seven months away, in June. That depends on reaching a deal between now and the February meeting of EU leaders. If that doesn’t happen, it won’t be for lack of preparation. David Cameron has a reputation as the essay-crisis prime minister (he tends to produce an outstanding performance at the last moment), but that reflects his ruthless setting of priorities, rather than laziness. He is, equally, when it matters, the preparation prime minister.

We learned last week, for example, that he still rehearses for Prime Minister’s Questions, although the temptation must be to say, “It’s only Jeremy Corbyn – just give me the latest jobs figures before I go in.” But, no, Gary Gibbon of Channel 4 News reported that Michael Gove, the Lord Chancellor, plays the part of the Labour leader – to great comic effect – in Cameron’s prep sessions.

Similarly, Cameron has war-gamed the EU renegotiation and referendum in some detail, certainly with George Osborne and possibly with Gove as well. When I say “in some detail”, though, I do not mean the small print of the possible deal on restricting immigration from the rest of the EU. I suspect that Cameron still doesn’t know how that trickiest part of the negotiation is going to end, but he is confident that he will get something that he can sell to the British people.

British prime minister David Cameron speaks during a press conference, as part of an extraordinary council at the European Union (EU)headquarters in Brussels on 18 December 2015 (AFP)

No, I mean that Cameron has prepared the ground. He has watched Bulgarian folk singers dance across burning coals, waving prayers to St Nicholas in the smoke, as a guest of Boyko Borissov, the Prime Minister. “I should have got them to do that with my letter to Tusk,” he said, referring to his list of negotiating demands for the EU President.

One reason he was so keen to hold last month’s Commons vote to join the French bombing of Isis in Syria was to prepare the ground with François Hollande – whose support he secured on Thursday night.

Cameron has also war-gamed the domestic politics. Thus he has strung along anti-EU Conservatives until now, and it is getting harder for cabinet Outers to make the break. They will have to decide soon, and Cameron will have to decide how to manage them. Will he insist on collective cabinet responsibility, so that those who want to campaign to leave the EU have to resign, or will he suspend the rule, as Harold Wilson did in 1975, and allow cabinet ministers to campaign on either side? It’s a game of chicken: no one wants to be first to declare for Out in case there are so few of them that Cameron can safely force them out of the Cabinet, so they are waiting to see what the deal looks like in February, by which time the momentum will all be for In.

The opinion polls seem confusing. Last week, two showed huge leads for “Remain”, two suggested a tie, and one, from Lord Ashcroft, put “Leave” ahead. The two “Remain” polls were carried out by phone, and ComRes, which did one of them, argues that they are more accurate, because online poll samples tend to be untypically “engaged” on the EU question.

In any case, other polls show that Cameron’s recommendation will carry a lot of weight – enough to sway most Conservative voters and even most Tory party members. If he can present his renegotiation as a success and recommend it to the voters, it will be too late for cabinet ministers or even newspapers to stop him.

Twitter.com/@JohnRentoul