This morning, I was in the Tea Room. It was packed with salivating Tories. The atmosphere was that of a students’ refectory before a students union debate: full of impotent expectation. I say impotent because the Bill is a constitutional nonsense, as we all surely realise.
The Prime Minister has made it clear that if we have a Conservative Government after the next election—God forbid—he will renegotiate Britain’s membership of the EU and then hold a referendum. He is supporting the Bill because it is about a referendum in the next Parliament. However, as we all know, it is constitutionally impossible for this Parliament to make a decision that binds a future Parliament.
What we are engaged in today is a pantomime. The Bill is not about the country’s needs. It is another bone for Eurosceptics to gnaw away at until they eventually go blue in the face. I am sad because this pantomime is also a tragedy. The Bill poses a grave risk to the economic interests of this country. I very much regret that the Prime Minister and Conservative party are more concerned about that party’s internal politics than about the best interests of the people of this country. In seeking to place a question mark over Britain’s membership of the European Union, the Bill creates enormous strategic uncertainty for Britain’s place in the single market. As Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of the advertising group WPP, said in response to the Prime Minister’s Bloomberg speech, it is
“another reason why people will postpone investment decisions”