Tories claim some cabinet support for Europe policy change

The Euro-sceptic right of the Tory party are pretty bushy-tailed  after Lord Lawson’s article in The Times proclaiming himself as a new recruit to the “better off out” faction of the Tory party. Conservative MPs talk of “events moving fast” and “the ground giving way” from the prime minister’s strategy outlined in January.

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David Cameron‘s speech early in the new year on Europe was supposed to give the Tory right enough to keep them quiet through to the 2015 general election. The PM would commit to a renegotiation of the UK’s membership terms with EU partners to be followed by an in/out referendum. But the Ukip surge in last week’s English county council elections has reignited calls for much more than that.

No. 10 might take a bit of comfort from internal (Judean Front style) divisions on the Tory right. There are those calling for a bill now committing the party to a referendum (No. 10 has signalled it’s ready to go along with that idea) and those who say there must be a referendum in this parliament on the negotiating terms for the post-2015 talks on Britain’s EU membership.

No. 10 might even take some comfort from the quite waspish disdain you sometimes pick up from different Euro-sceptics rubbishing colleagues’ alternative tactics. But it shouldn’t take too much comfort. What unites these mini-factions is that they want David Cameron to move on quickly and decisively to setting out his negotiating stance.

That’s something No. 10 was ready to start shading in with some key demands in time for the 2015 general election manifesto. It was one of the central tasks outlined to the new Policy Unit chief, Jo Johnson MP. Some Tory MPs are saying that’s not fast enough.

All the Tory right-wingers I spoke to today echo Nigel Lawson’s concerns about “inconsequential” changes coming out of an EU renegotiation. They worry about talks that just “tweak” existing membership terms, and they are emboldened by signals of support from Tories at the cabinet table.

One MP talked of five cabinet members backing the push for a change of Europe policy, another boasted of texts from one secretary of state urging him to keep up the good work as he toured the studios demanding that the prime minister abandon his policy on Europe announced in January.

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