How much longer can the media maintain the fiction that there is a position known as ‘Euroscepticism’? How much longer will it matter? The carefully-planned utterly ruthless nature of David Cameron’s EU Referendum trap grows clearer every day. It is so brutal to these useless two-faced people (the Tory ‘Eurosceptics’) that I almost admire it for its sheer honesty. They richly deserve it. The trouble is that the Cameron policy, as in all modern political actions, is so hedged about with lies, and serves such a nasty purpose, that I cannot possibly pay it any compliments. There is also the problem that Mr Cameron is upset about his ruthless words being correctly reported, and is now moaning that , when he proclaimed the same thing months ago, he was *not* said to be threatening to sack ministers who dissented from his EU line. Oh yes he was. This amusing article demonstrates that he is wrong about this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/11658640/David-Cameron-at-the-G7-summit-live.html

Actually I can’t see how he could have been much clearer, when he spoke to reporters at the G7 boondoggle on Sunday: ‘At the G7 conference in Germany, Mr Cameron was asked whether he had “absolutely closed” his mind to allowing ministers a free vote. He replied: “I’ve been very clear. If you want to be part of the Government, you have to take the view that we are engaged in an exercise of renegotiation, to have a referendum, and that will lead to a successful outcome.”’

As he was making this plain, a pitiful rump of Tory MPs were forming the awfully nice and genteel ‘Conservatives for Britain’ group of ‘Eurosceptics’ , who are so sweet and loyal that they will ‘wait and see’ what Mr Cameron brings back from Brussels before deciding whether to campaign for ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.

In contrast to their refined, consensual and modest approach, Kenneth Clarke let fly at opponents of the EU as ‘hard core right wing nationalists’ This is no doubt what David Cameron thinks too, but he leaves it to Mr Clarke to say out loud. Mr Clarke (for all his cuddly appearance and genuine love for jazz) fights like a tiger for two things – one, British integration in the EU superstate and the other, a weaker criminal justice system.

Mr Clarke told Sky News : ‘It was obvious from the moment we said we were going to have a referendum that there would be party groups from all sides. There’s a hard core, right-wing nationalist end of the party that is determined to try to leave the European Union at any cost. These particular demands that they’re putting forward are of course completely incompatible with membership of the European Union and the European Economic Area.”

He added: “These are rather isolationist foreign policy people." If only it were true.

I am myself wondering whether many of those who have long given the impression of wanting this country to leave the EU will, in the coming months, be revealing that Mr Cameron’s clever negotiations (or just his general genius, so great that he is bound to succeed anyway) have persuaded them to support a ‘yes’ vote.

Watch out for lots and lots of people , previously thought of as ‘leading eurosceptics’, being ‘deeply impressed’ by the ‘concessions’ ‘won’ by our Great Leader, and stumbling, weeping, into the camp of the converted. Think this is unlikely? See the following:

I was chided by a correspondent over the weekend for referring to the Tory ‘Eurosceptics’ as ‘pointless blowhards’. But I do not think this was unjust. Another contributor had contacted me a few days earlier with news of an astonishing gathering of the Bruges Group. I have spoken to this tendency twice myself, once in the Autumn of 2009 when my warning that Mr Cameron was in fact a Blairite liberal was greeted with frigid hostility, more recently to a friendlier reception for the same message.

My informant told me that this meeting ( which I had known of but had been unable to attend, in London on Monday 1st June) had been acrimonious but also very interesting. An account of it is to be found here

https://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/bruges-group-meeting-1-april-2015-john-redwood-says-he-could-vote-to-stay-in-the-eu/

This is the key passage : John Redwood ‘was so out of touch with the feeling of the audience that he came close to being booed. As it was there were frequent cries of “no”, “rubbish” and general murmurings of dissent as he asked the audience to trust Cameron’s honesty in his attempt to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU and put forward a plan for the OUT campaign which side-lined Nigel Farage . (The traffic of audience disapproval was countered by support for Redwood , but judged by the noise made those against him were considerably more numerous than his supporters).

‘Redwood said that he believed in Cameron’s honest intent in his negotiations with EU. Consequently, he would not make up his mind whether to vote to leave until Cameron had completed his negotiations. Also said explicitly that he would vote to stay in if the renegotiations were successful. I think most people who have followed Redwood’s voluminous pronouncements on the EU over the years will be more than a little surprised by his adoption of such an equivocal position as the referendum approaches. His position was all the more unexpected because he began his talk by denouncing the fact that membership of the EU meant elected governments – most notably Greece at present – could not do what their electors wanted even if they wished to. An important question arises, if Redwood is undecided about which way he will vote how can he be part of the planning of the OUT campaign? Indeed, if Cameron gets concessions which Redwood deems enough to persuade him to vote to stay in, presumably he will be campaigning with the stay in camp.’

The author points out that Mr Redwood, whose ambitions of office under David Cameron must be minimal, still took a position sympathetic to the Prime Minister. Yet this is a man who, when his chances of high office were real and immediate, was once a fierce opponent of EU integration. What has become of him?

For he is also blazingly intelligent and must know that the EU simply does not give major powers back to its member states after it has given them up. Oddly enough there is one anomalous exception to this. It is the recent opportunity given to member states to opt out of various Home Affairs measures. The background to this oddity is obscure and hard to explain. Please believe me that it is wholly exceptional and unlikely to be repeated. The thing is, it showed beyond doubt that Mr Cameron in practice favours tighter British integration with the EU, even when he is free to reject it. This surely tells us all we need to know about the coming negotiations.

David Cameron chose (without serious challenge from his ‘Eurosceptic’ backbenchers or anyone else), to re-enter the European Arrest Warrant, which destroys Habeas Corpus, and gravely undermines the presumption of innocence and the Bill of Rights, I mean, the one we actually have. This document analyses the implications of the EU’s accelerating and very serious expansion into Home Affairs and law, probably the single most important conflict between English liberty and the continental belief in a strong state, because we are more likely to lose it than any of the previous ones. http://www.gerardbattenmep.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/FJS-PDF-Copy-28th-Feb-2012.pdf

It is quite funny, a few months later to see him demanding (with no realistic hope of success) the return of other unstated powers.

But then the whole thing is quite funny if you have, like me, chosen despair as the only realistic option. If there ever was a chance for this country to reassert its independence, it passed long ago. I am just grateful that I can remember Britain when it was still a sovereign country, and glad that, in 1975, I was lucky enough to vote ‘No’.