Brexit campaign surges ahead with 9-point lead in first poll since Cameron's EU deal

Blackleaf

Blackleaf

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It seems that the British electorate isn't happy with Mr Cameron's feeble EU renegotiation deal and could now be leaning towards voting for a Brexit as a result.

The campaign for Britain to leave the European Union was today given a massive boost after a poll gave it a nine point lead - the first since David Cameron unveiled his draft EU deal.

The record lead for the Brexit campaign suggests voters have overwhelmingly rejected the Prime Minister's plans for an emergency brake for EU migrants' access to benefits and a 'red card' for national parliaments to veto EU laws.

It deals a blow to Cameron as he kick-starts his charm offensive to persuade EU leaders to agree to the deal before a crucial Brussels summit later this month.

The first survey of public opinion since Tuesday's deal found 45 per cent of voters will opt to quit the EU, while just 36 per cent want to remain.

It is the biggest lead for Brexit since the wording of the referendum question was confirmed last summer.

EU in/out referendum: Brexit campaign surges ahead with 9-point lead in first poll since David Cameron's EU deal as the PM kick-starts his Euro charm offensive in Poland and Denmark

Record lead for Out campaign suggests voters have rejected PM's plans
But crucially, one in five voters have yet to decide which way they will vote
PM reiterates his support for staying in the EU as he arrives in Warsaw
He then jets off to Copenhagen to meet Danish PM Lars Løkke Rasmussen

By Matt Dathan, Mailonline Political Correspondent
5 February 2016 Daily Mail
The campaign for Britain to leave the European Union was today given a massive boost after a poll gave it a nine point lead - the first since David Cameron unveiled his draft EU deal.

The record lead for the Brexit campaign suggests voters have overwhelmingly rejected the Prime Minister's plans for an emergency brake for EU migrants' access to benefits and a 'red card' for national parliaments to veto EU laws.

It deals a blow to Cameron as he kick-starts his charm offensive to persuade EU leaders to agree to the deal before a crucial Brussels summit later this month.


David Cameron met Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło, pictured right, in Warsaw this morning as he began his efforts to persuade his 27 EU counterparts to agree to his draft renegotiation to keep Britain in the EU


Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło has been a stumbling block to Cameron's hopes of securing changes to benefit rules - such as the absurd rule which allows Polish immigrants in Britain to claim British child benefit for their children in Poland - but today expressed support for his draft deal to keep Britain in the EU

The first survey of public opinion since Tuesday's deal found 45 per cent of voters will opt to quit the EU, while just 36 per cent want to remain.

It is the biggest lead for Brexit since the wording of the referendum question was confirmed last summer.

But crucially, one in five voters have yet to decide which way they will vote. according to the YouGov survey for The Times.

This morning Cameron reiterated his support for Britain's continued membership of the EU as he arrived to meet Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło in Warsaw.

'I think Britain is better off in a reformed European Union if we can achieve those changes and I think it is something that will be good for Britain, good for Europe and also good for Poland.

'We want to make sure that our cooperation is as close as possible in the months and years to come.'


John Whittingdale, pictured left, became the first cabinet minister to test Cameron's rules on opposing EU membership by refusing to rule out backing Brexit while David Davis, pictured right, ridiculed Mr Cameron's deal as a 'waste of time'

The Polish premier has been a stumbling block for Cameron as he sought changes to rules on EU migrants claiming benefits in Britain, expressing concern that the 800,000 poles who live in the UK will be hit.

But speaking this morning, she signalled she would support Cameron's draft deal.

Cameron's enthusiastic backing for his renegotiation deal has led to claims he is gagging his Eurosceptic ministers while racing ahead with his own campaign and the pressure from his Eurosceptic MPs has intensified over the last week.

Last night Culture Secretary John Whittingdale became the first cabinet minister to test Cameron's rules on opposing EU membership by refusing to rule out backing Brexit.

The Prime Minister has agreed to suspend the 'collective responsibility' rules and allow his ministers to publicly oppose him on the EU referendum - but only once he has finalised his negotiation and presented it to the Cabinet.

'I have a track record where I've been highly critical of the way the EU works and I have opposed measures for closer integration and it certainly needs reform.

'I hope the Prime Minister will get that agreement and then I'll look at it when he comes back with it.'

Asked if he would rule out backing Brexit, he replied: 'I wouldn't.'

His intervention came just hours after David Davis, Mr Cameron's former leadership rival, launched a bid to lead the Out campaign.

In a speech yesterday, Mr Davis ridiculed the Prime Minister's EU renegotiation deal as 'so unambitious as to be a waste of time'.

Today's poll will vindicate the Tory Eurosceptics and shows that in just one week the Out campaign has risen three points, while the In camp is down by two compared to the previous YouGov survey.

The poll, which was carried out after Cameron announced his draft deal on Tuesday, shows that once undecided voters are excluded, the out campaign is on 56 per cent and the In campaign on 44 per cent.

Cameron also came under fire from association chairmen, grassroots campaigners and Tory grandees last night after he ordered his MPs to ignore local parties' views on Europe.

Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday he told MPs they should not decide their view on the EU referendum 'because of what your constituency association might say'.

Association chairmen, grassroots campaigners and Tory grandees savaged the Prime Minister, who was accused of showing contempt for members' views.

Osman Dervish, a councillor and chairman of Romford Conservative Association in East London, said of Mr Cameron's comments:

'Every constituency chairman has to take their members on board. We should not just show contempt for what the members say. You can't just ignore them. There are concerns among the grassroots about the remarks he has made about us in the past. This reinforces them.'

Andrew Mackness, chairman of the Conservative Association in Rochester and Strood, Kent, said: 'I am annoyed the Prime Minister told MPs they should ignore their associations. They are the people who put them there, not the Prime Minister. I take exception that I receive emails and letters from the Prime Minister on Conservative Party letterhead that only presents his side.'

VOTERS ARE 'CRYING OUT' FOR AN EU TV DEBATE


The then Liberal Democrats leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg (pro-EU) and Ukip leader Nigel Farage (anti-EU) debated the pros and cons of the EU in two TV debates ahead of the 2014 European Parliament elections which Ukip won in the UK, getting 24 seats

A leading democracy campaigner has claimed voters are 'crying out' for national TV debate on the EU referendum.

Ahead of the elections for the European Parliament in 2014 Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage went head-to-head but David Cameron and Ed Miliband refuesed to take part.

Katie Ghose, the chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society, said televised TV debates had become something voters saw as fundamental to national elections.

She said: 'We strongly support the idea of a TV debate for the EU referendum as a way to engage people in the run-up to the vote, and we would urge participants to give voters the quality of information and debate that they are crying out for.'
 
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Blackleaf

Blackleaf

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As Mr Cameron waxed lyrical about his non-existent victories — from a belated and therefore pointless brake on migrant benefits, to a vague and completely meaningless promise to respect British sovereignty — you could almost hear the nation laughing with disbelief.

Yet Britain’s future in Europe is no laughing matter, and I doubt I am alone in thinking that we deserve far, far better than the current EU non-debate in which, apart from anything else, Eurosceptic Cabinet ministers have been cynically muzzled.

What David Cameron won’t dare admit is that the EU he so longs to remain part of is in peril as never before.


Mr Cameron's beloved EU is imploding. The reason? The elected elite running it simply don't understand the power of patriotism, writes DOMINIC SANDBROOK

By Dominic Sandbrook for the Daily Mail
6 February 2016
Daily Mail
Well, I hate to say I told you so, but I did. This week, David Cameron returned from his continental tour proudly waving a piece of paper purporting to represent a new deal for Britain in Europe.

And just as I predicted in these pages several weeks ago, his much-vaunted renegotiation exercise has turned out to be an utter waste of time.

Like Harold Wilson’s similarly cynical effort in 1975, the last time this country had an EU in/out referendum, it proved to be nothing more than an expensive public relations exercise, designed to mollify the Eurosceptics in his own party and to persuade voters to back Britain’s membership of the EU.

Mr Cameron and his allies did their best to present his appearance in the Commons as a profound national event. In fact, it was more like a magician’s appearance at a children’s tea party: a slick feat, certainly, but a long way short of statesmanlike.


David Cameron returned from his continental tour proudly waving a piece of paper purporting to represent a new deal for Britain in Europe. Above, he meets Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło

As Mr Cameron waxed lyrical about his non-existent victories — from a belated and therefore pointless brake on migrant benefits, to a vague and completely meaningless promise to respect British sovereignty — you could almost hear the nation laughing with disbelief.

Yet Britain’s future in Europe is no laughing matter, and I doubt I am alone in thinking that we deserve far, far better than the current EU non-debate in which, apart from anything else, Eurosceptic Cabinet ministers have been cynically muzzled.

What David Cameron won’t dare admit is that the EU he so longs to remain part of is in peril as never before.

If you really want to get a sense of Europe’s future, then forget the embarrassing charade in the House of Commons. And forget Mr Cameron’s little PR stunt, a mere sideshow compared with the gigantic dramas unfolding on the EU’s eastern and southern borders.

Our parliamentarians may love to boast about their sense of history. But if you want a genuinely compelling example of how our continent’s bloody past is shaping our shared future, then turn your eyes instead to the East.

In the West, the debate about the future of the EU is naturally coloured by memories of World War II. Indeed, in 2012, the EU was even awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for having supposedly guaranteed ‘60 years of peace in Europe’.

Further east, however, another shadow looms, if anything, even larger. In EU member states such as Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the Baltic nations, memories of another vast multi-national project — the Communist empire of the Soviet Union — are still red-raw.

Great swathes of central and eastern Europe still bear the scars of Communist repression, from the great hulking concrete monoliths that dominate their cities to the widows who still mourn their vanished husbands.

And it is precisely because so many of our European neighbours harbour such bitter memories that the collapse of Lenin’s blood-drenched experiment raises uncomfortable questions about the survival of today’s EU — questions that Mr Cameron’s renegotiation exercise has utterly failed to address.

On the face of it, of course, the EU and the USSR could hardly appear more different. Brussels is not the Kremlin. There are no EU labour camps, no psychiatric hospitals for political dissidents, no tanks rolling into the streets of occupied capitals.

What they do have in common, though, is an over-riding belief in international unity.

The Communists dreamed of uniting Europe under the Red Flag. They believed they could erase centuries of history, eradicating national differences, pulling down borders, wiping away the hatreds of the past. Lenin saw himself as the leader of ‘an international workers’ brotherhood’; hence his enthusiasm for the song The Internationale, which became the official worldwide Communist anthem.

‘We are opposed to national enmity and discord, to national exclusiveness,’ he wrote in 1919. ‘We are internationalists.’

Read those last words again, and ask yourself how they might sound coming from a senior figure in the EU.

The answer is that they would sound perfectly natural, because the principle of internationalism (‘ever closer union’, as the EU puts it) is at the very heart of the European project.

The key figure in the foundation of the EU, the French official Jean Monnet — a bureaucrat never once elected to a public office — made this quite explicit. ‘National sovereignty,’ he once said, was finished. ‘There is no future for the people of Europe other than in union.’


EU founding French official Jean Monnet said national sovereignty was finished

It goes without saying that Lenin’s idea of internationalism and the EU’s version are very different. All the same, they both represent a utopian attempt to erase the legacy of history and to impose continental uniformity in place of national diversity.

In reality, the idea that Europe’s natural state is a harmonious union has always struck me as complete drivel. Not even the Romans managed to unite all Europe under one banner. Plenty of people — despots, usually — have tried since, but all have failed.

The Habsburg emperor Charles V had a go in the 16th century, picturing himself as the head of a European ‘universal monarchy’. He failed.

So did France’s dwarfish emperor Napoleon, some 150 years later. Hitler came closest to pulling it off, albeit in a peculiarly bloodthirsty form. But he failed too, in the end.

The truth is that for all the high-minded pieties of Brussels officials, and for all their fatuous attempts to promote a common European identity, national differences still run very deep indeed.

Most ordinary Europeans feel little loyalty to their continent, and still less to the policy-makers in Brussels. Their primary loyalty is to their family — their own immediate family, of course, but also to their wider national family, whether they are Britons or Germans, Spaniards or Hungarians, Poles, Danes or Lithuanians.

Nothing bears that out better than the reaction to the migration crisis, which represents an overpowering challenge to the European elite’s fantasy of a common political identity.

For as the French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has admitted, the scale of the human tide has left the EU overwhelmed. ‘If Europe is not capable of protecting its own borders,’ he told the BBC, ‘it’s the very idea of Europe that will be questioned.’


EU officials have spent the past few days quivering with rage against the Greeks, whom they blame for letting thousands of refugees cross their borders. Above, Syrians flee Syrian government and Russian airstrikes in Aleppo


Denmark has already introduced draconian regulations forcing refugees to hand over a proportion of their assets

The problem is not just the sheer number of Middle Eastern and North African migrants clamouring to get into the EU — a challenge that Mr Cameron barely mentioned in his Commons statement. It is also the inevitable collision between internationalist idealism and national self-interest.

Brussels thinks that all member states ought to do their bit. But most national governments think they ought to look after their own interests first.

The result has been the unedifying spectacle of national governments squabbling bitterly about border controls and migrant quotas, pausing only to fire verbal salvos at the EU itself.

As it happens, EU officials have spent the past few days quivering with rage against the Greeks, whom they blame for letting thousands of migrants cross their borders, while the Greeks claim that western European states are merely trying to shift the blame for their own failings.

Denmark has already introduced draconian regulations forcing refugees to hand over a proportion of their assets, while Sweden has just announced plans to expel up to 80,000 migrants using specially chartered aircraft.

At the very least, the Schengen agreement, which guarantees open borders across most of the EU, seems doomed to the scrapheap.

Indeed, if you want a symbol of the death of internationalism, then just look at the famous Oresund Bridge, spanning the narrow strait between Denmark’s capital Copenhagen and the Swedish city of Malmo.


The Oresund bridge connecting Denmark and Sweden

This is the bridge that features in the cult BBC4 crime series The Bridge, itself a collaboration between the Danes and the Swedes. On television, detectives whizz back and forth across the bridge on their way to their next moody crime scene.

But in reality, the bridge has come to symbolise the death of utopian idealism. On January 6, responding to the migrant crisis, the Swedes brought in border checks for the first time in the bridge’s history.

In the Guardian newspaper, a Swedish academic bemoaned the fact that what he called ‘short-term national goals’ had supplanted the European vision of ‘how businesses, civil society and people can integrate across national and cultural divides’.

But pursuing short-term national goals is precisely what nation-states do. To expect them to behave otherwise is not merely absurdly unrealistic; it is a dangerous fantasy.

The real fault-line lies in central and eastern Europe, in precisely those countries that were oppressed by the Soviet jackboot until the revolutions of 1989. In countries such as Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, and especially in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which were once part of the USSR itself, memories of totalitarian imperialism are still all too fresh.

Their sense of patriotism and national identity is often intensely strong, as a reaction to the long years of foreign oppression. And since most still see themselves as exclusively Christian countries, there has been a groundswell of popular discontent at the prospect of opening their doors to thousands of Muslim refugees.

Not surprisingly, therefore, governments from the Baltic to the Balkans are outraged at the thought of being ordered by the EU to accept mandatory quotas of Middle Eastern migrants.


Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who rails against what he calls the ‘profiteers, monopolies, cartels and imperial bureaucrats’ of Brussels

Hungary provides the most potent example. This year, the Hungarians are marking the 60th anniversary of the 1956 uprising, when thousands of ordinary people took to the streets to fight for freedom, only to have their national aspirations crushed under the tanks of the Red Army.

The legacy of 1956 means that the Hungarians have a particularly intense sense of their own identity.

Indeed, in recent years, kicking against the EU, they have been seduced by the xenophobic populism of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who inveighs against what he calls the ‘profiteers, monopolies, cartels and imperial bureaucrats’ of Brussels.

And where Hungary leads, other Eastern European countries now follow.

The Polish interior minister announced last week that his government will veto any EU attempt to impose migrant quotas on member states, while Slovakia’s Prime Minister, Robert Fico, promised that his country would ‘never make a voluntary decision that would lead to the formation of a united Muslim community in Slovakia’.

The result, he insisted, would be atrocities on the scale of the recent outrages in Paris.

‘Multiculturalism is a fiction. Once you let migrants in, you can face such problems.’

If the Brussels elite think that Mr Orban and Mr Fico are going to shut up and roll over, then I fear they are deluding themselves.

The truth is that the peoples of Eastern Europe waited too long for their freedom to see it swallowed up in the name of continental unity.

Despite what the euro-idealists believe, national differences do still matter.

It is sheer arrogance to think that, almost overnight, the European elite can rewrite the history of an entire continent.

For as the past shows with overwhelming clarity, national patriotism is often a far more powerful force than either utopian idealism or economic self-interest.

It is not yet too late for Europe’s politicians to acknowledge the power of nationalism and to devise a more robust response to the migration crisis — one that reconciles our human obligation to those in need with individual nations’ understandable urge to protect their borders.

But if they fail to learn the lessons of the past, then one day, I fear, the EU will go the way of the Soviet Union — a discredited vision of utopian internationalism, unceremoniously dumped in the dustbin of history.

And if that happens, then who will even remember David Cameron’s little tour?

Read more: David Cameron's beloved EU is imploding due to patriotism | Daily Mail Online
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PETER OBORNE: We knew the EU hates democracy. Now it seems our leaders do too

By Peter Oborne For The Daily Mail
6 February 2016
Daily Mail
This ought, by rights, to have been David Cameron’s worst week so far as Prime Minister.

It was the week he sold out everything he once professed to believe, the week he turned his back on the voters and became the commander-in-chief of an arrogant political elite, and the week he tore up the Conservative manifesto on which he fought the general election.

When David Cameron pledged a referendum in his famous Bloomberg speech three years ago, he promised to deliver ‘fundamental, far-reaching change’ in Britain’s relations with Europe. He hasn’t achieved this, or anything resembling it, and since he is an intelligent man he most certainly knows this.

True, the Prime Minister has been sharply criticised by a tough and independent-minded Press. And voters have been dismayed by his lack of integrity and resolve: polls have shifted sharply in favour of quitting Europe since the squalid details of Mr Cameron’s pathetic EU deal became known.


This ought, by rights, to have been David Cameron’s worst week so far as Prime Minister, writes Peter Oborne

Yet so far he has actually paid a negligible political price and, despite that shift in the polls, seems confident his EU deal will win the day. Part of this is down to the lamentable conduct of the eurosceptic Jeremy Corbyn, who culpably has had nothing to say about an issue which will determine the shape of Britain for generations to come.

It is simply astonishing that he did not even raise the subject at Prime Minister’s Questions last week. Mr Corbyn’s inertia amounts to the most wretched dereliction of duty by an Opposition leader since Iain Duncan Smith failed to ask penetrating questions about Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq 13 years ago.

But there is a second, more troubling reason for David Cameron’s Teflon-coated week. He has used the power and muscle of his Downing Street machine to bribe, cajole and threaten eurosceptic ministers to stay in line.

Conscious that his negotiations cannot withstand scrutiny, the PM has silenced internal critics by ruthlessly enforcing collective Cabinet responsibility.

This has led to a grotesque double standard at the heart of the Government. On the one hand, the Prime Minister no longer bothers to hide the fact that he will be leading the Remain In Europe campaign. He has even casually authorised his party chairman, out-and-out europhile Lord Feldman, to raise funds for it.

On the other hand, eurosceptic Cabinet ministers have been gagged. Of course they are complicit in this, predominantly for self-interested reasons. Indeed, the conduct of these senior politicians is, in some cases, beneath contempt.

At the Tory Party conference last October, Home Secretary Theresa May memorably warned about the dangers of mass immigration, about the threat it poses to social cohesion, and the urgent need to control Britain’s borders.

Yet Mrs May now seems not to mind about mass immigration after all. For last week she indicated she supports the Remain campaign, even though David Cameron has achieved nothing to seriously challenge EU laws allowing the free movement of workers between member states — laws which must be tackled if we are to reduce the number of migrants coming to the UK.

Mrs May, who hopes to be a future Prime Minister, has put her career before her patriotism. This is the kind of selfish and gutless conduct that causes politicians to be despised.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond once claimed that he was a strong critic of the European Union. Today, for nakedly careerist reasons, he has become a leading supporter of the EU.


At the Tory Party conference last October, Home Secretary Theresa May warned about the dangers of mass immigration

It looks like Business Secretary Sajid Javid is taking the same cynical course.

To be fair, we know that a handful of cabinet ministers, led by Iain Duncan Smith and Chris Grayling, will indeed campaign to leave Europe. I also expect Justice Secretary Michael Gove to stick with his principles and join the Leave camp.

There is no questioning the honour or integrity of these Cabinet ministers. However they, too, are open to criticism because they have been comprehensively outmanoevred.

They should never have allowed the Prime Minister to insist on their silence. By doing so they allowed the Remain campaign to shape the narrative of events, since the Prime Minister and his allies can campaign for Britain to stay in Europe while they can’t say a thing. It is, of course, true that other voices are there to fill the anti-EU vacuum. UKIP’s Nigel Farage — without whom the referendum would never have been held — is a powerful spokesman, as are many backbench Tories, among whom John Redwood is especially clear-headed and eloquent. So, too, is David Davis.

But the fact is that no mainstream political figure has had the guts to stand up for what he believes, and to resign his frontbench position and join the fight.

The ranks of the Leave camp are far more sparse even than during the last referendum under Harold Wilson in 1975, when Tony Benn, Enoch Powell, Labour Cabinet heavyweight Peter Shore and others joined a team with high intellect and experience.

Make no mistake, this is a dangerous moment for democracy. Polls suggest that approximately half of all voters have gnawing doubts about the European Union. Yet all the major political parties are strongly in favour.

This gulf between politicians and the electorate is especially troubling because the referendum is ultimately about democracy — and, thanks to the cowardice of our political class, democracy is precisely what we are not going to get.

Perhaps this is not so much of a coincidence. Over the past few decades the European Commission has worked hard to abolish what we in Britain have traditionally regarded as democratic politics.

Decision-making has been moved away from national parliaments. On most issues that matter, from the economy to immigration, decisions which viscerally affect the lives of voters are now taken by anonymous, unaccountable bureaucrats rather than politicians who are responsible to their voters.

The prime ministers of Greece, Italy and Spain today are effectively branch managers for the European Central Bank and pro-EU Goldman Sachs, which hold their countries’ purse-strings. We have come very close to the abolition of politics, replacing it with rule by bureaucrats and bankers.

And David Cameron, by determinedly crushing debate, is shamelessly going along with this lack of democratic accountability.

Just possibly his manoeuvres may come back to haunt him. The smell from them is simply too putrid to be ignored. Already disenchanted voters may yet identify the entire campaign to remain in the EU with a sleazy, incompetent bunch of politicians who have let them down again and again.

The chance to tell them to get lost — and vote ‘Leave’ — may yet prove irresistible.
 
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