David Cameron in the Commons: damage limitation for career and country

The great swaggerer came to the Commons not humbled but humiliated. David Cameron though was a man on a rearguard mission today.

He repeatedly told the Commons that being in the Single Market would be the best solution for Britain. He knows that involves freedom of movement of peoples under the current rules he failed to change in his renegotiation.

In his answer to the SNP Parliamentary leader Angus Robertson he spoke of how Scotland, rather than leaving the UK and the EU “should try to remain in both.”

Along with George Osborne and Philip Hammond, the Prime Minister seems focused on a somewhat late and not entirely guaranteed programme of damage limitation. If he could keep the UK together and keep the UK in the Single Market he might feel his legacy was battered but not destroyed.

It sounds like the UKIP leader Nigel Farage is getting more than a whiff of this. In an interview on Channel 4 News tonight with Jonathan Rugman, Mr Farage says: “I am nervous more nervous than I was on Friday morning.

“I am beginning to hear noises, I am beginning to detect there may be some backsliding and I do not find that acceptable. I don’t care who next conservative leader is as long as they hold faith with stopping the free movement of people “

Mr Farage’s suspicions won’t have been eased by Boris Johnson’s article in this morning’s Telegraph in which the Tory leadership candidate talked about the single market in a way that started alarm bells in some Leave quarters.

One supporter of Mr Johnson’s said he was simply opening up a bargaining position for future negotiations.