I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. The difficulty for the Prime Minister was that his attempt to secure brittle unity in his January speech was achieved only through the device of obscurity. We have heard it again today in relation to employment and social rights. We have all read the Beecroft report and know that the real agenda is to bring powers home to take rights away, but the Prime Minister could not even find it in himself to talk about unemployment and social rights in his speech at the end of January. The fact is that he knows
and understands that the gap between what his Back Benchers want and what Europe could possibly countenance remains achingly wide.
Let me return to the Foreign Secretary, who back in November went on to say about a referendum:
“It would not help anyone looking for a job. It would not help any business trying to expand. It would mean that for a time, we, the leading advocates of removing barriers to trade in Europe and the rest of the world, would lack the authority to do so.”
That last point seemed to pass the Prime Minister by when he made his point in County Fermanagh 10 days ago. The Foreign Secretary went on to say:
“It would mean that as we advocate closer trading links between the EU and the countries of north Africa as they emerge from their revolutions, helping to solidify tremendous potential advances in human freedom and prosperity, we would stand back from that. That is not the right way to respond to this dramatic year of uncertainty and change.”—[Official Report, 24 October 2011; Vol. 534, c. 55.]