Prime minister lays ground for referendum after EU negotiations in which UK would be lucky to secure cosmetic changes
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Harold Wilson held a referendum to confirm Britain's membership of the EEC in 1975 after securing cosmetic changes. Photograph: Imagno/Getty Images
David Cameron will loathe the comparison. But he is lining up to become the new Harold Wilson of British politics.
Labour's second longest serving prime minister famously papered over cracks in his cabinet by holding a referendum in 1975 to confirm Britain's membership of the EEC. The referendum is held up as an example of Wilson's central flaw – that he was a schemer whose main aim was to hold his feuding cabinets together.
Cameron finds himself in a similar position. The prime minister laid the ground for a possible referendum on Britain's place in the EU when he wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that "the two words 'Europe' and 'referendum' can go together".
If Cameron ever holds a referendum it will be on similar lines to the one called in 1975. Britain will call for a renegotiation of Britain's EU membership terms when a major treaty revision is held to endorse new governance arrangements for the eurozone. A few concessions may be offered, probably the repatriation of some social and employment laws along the lines of those outlined in the Tory manifesto. The prime minister will hail these as a great victory and will ask for them to be endorsed by the British people. On the other hand Cameron may be rebuffed, as I wrote on Thursday.
There is one great difference between Cameron and Wilson, however. Cameron really does believe in Britain's membership of the EU, as he made clear at his press conference after last week's Brussels summit when he rejected the idea of an in / out referendum.
This also highlights the division between Cameron and Liam Fox, the former defence secretary, who is calling for an immediate negotiation on Britain's EU membership followed by a referendum. Fox knows that such a negotiation is a non-starter while the EU is struggling to contain the eurozone crisis. So he says the government should follow the course dear to his heart – recommend a No vote in a referendum. Fox wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that "life outside the EU holds no terror" for him. Nick Robinson has written about this.
While the prime minister is a eurosceptic, life outside the EU does hold terror for him. He gave two broad reasons for this in his Sunday Telegraph article:
• The EU's single market is vital for Britain's economic interests.
• Co-operating with EU allies allows Britain and other European countries to punch above their weight in the world.
The prime minister knows he has to tread with care because the Tory eurosceptic right is like a pack of hounds who can smell fear. Cameron spent 45 minutes preparing for his press conference after the summit on Friday to ensure his line on the EU was pitch perfect. He thought he had done well as he boasted of his gains at the summit and depicted himself as a "pragmatic eurosceptic".
But then Cameron mucked up by placing too much emphasis on rejecting an in / out referendum and too little emphasis on keeping the door open to a referendum in the future. This explains the panicked article in the Sunday Telegraph in which the prime minister threw a bone to the eurosceptic right.
The problem with a pack of hounds is, once they grab a bone, they never let go.