Prime Minister David Cameron promised today to give Britons a straight referendum choice on whether to stay in the European Union or leave, provided he wins an election in 2015.
Cameron ended months of speculation by announcing in a speech the plan for a vote sometime between 2015 and the end of 2017, shrugging off warnings that this could imperil Britain’s diplomatic and economic prospects and alienate its allies.
Cameron said Britain did not want to pull up the drawbridge and retreat from the world but that public disillusionment with the EU is at «an all-time high».
«It is time for the British people to have their say. It is time for us to settle this question about Britain and Europe,» Cameron said. His Conservative party would campaign for the 2015 election promising to renegotiate Britain’s EU membership.
«When we have negotiated that new settlement, we will give the British people a referendum with a very simple in or out choice to stay in the European Union on these new terms; or come out altogether. It will be an in-out referendum.»
Cameron said he wants Britain to claw back some powers from Brussels, a proposal that other European countries reject. Britain would do an «audit» to determine what powers Brussels had that should best be delegated to member states.
Sterling fell to its lowest in nearly five months against the dollar on Wednesday as Cameron was speaking.
Whether Cameron will ever hold the referendum remains as uncertain as the Conservatives’ chances of winning the next election due in 2015.
They trail the opposition Labour party in opinion polls, and the coalition government is pushing through painful public spending cuts to try to reduce Britain’s large budget deficit, likely to upset voters in the meantime.
Cameron’s promise looks likely to satisfy much of his own party, which has been split on the issue, but may create uncertainty when events could put his preferred option – a looser version of full British membership – out of reach.
The move may also unsettle other EU states, such as France and Germany. European officials have already warned Cameron against treating the bloc as an «a la carte menu» from which he can pick and choose membership terms.
The United States, a close ally, has said it wants Britain to remain inside the EU with «a strong voice».
The speech could also exacerbate rifts with Cameron’s pro-European Liberal Democrat junior coalition partners.
Cameron said he would prefer Britain, the world’s sixth biggest economy, to remain inside the 27-nation EU but he also made clear he believes the EU must be radically reformed. It was riskier to maintain the status quo than to change, he said.
«The biggest danger to the European Union comes not from those who advocate change, but from those who denounce new thinking as heresy,» he said.
If Britain left the EU, Cameron said it would be «a one-way ticket, not a return», adding however that he would campaign to stay inside a reformed EU «with all my heart and soul».
Meanwhile, Cameron’s pro-EU deputy Nick Clegg said his pledge to reform Britain’s role in the European Union and seek voters’ backing in a referendum before the end of 2017 will undermine the fragile UK economic recovery.
«Years and years of uncertainty because of a protracted, ill-defined renegotiation of our place in Europe is not in the national interest because it hits growth and jobs,» the deputy prime minister told BBC television after Cameron gave a long-awaited speech on EU policy in London.
«The overwhelming priority of the British people is jobs, is growth, is a strong economy,» Clegg added.
Clegg, who leads the junior coalition partner, the centre-left Liberal Democrats, has previously attacked Cameron’s goal of clawing back powers from Brussels, describing it as a «false promise wrapped in a Union Jack».
Cameron promised to give Britons a straight referendum choice on whether to stay in the European Union or leave, provided he wins an election in 2015.
Source: Buenos Aires Herald