On the eve of the Conservative conference in Manchester, opinion polls have begun to shift towards UK withdrawal from the European Union in the approaching referendum. The shift is not yet conclusive, but it is stronger than for a long time. On Monday, YouGov recorded its first Brexit majority for almost a year, with “remain” on 38% and “leave” on 40%, while the Daily Telegraph tracker poll on the issue shows a dramatic narrowing between “stay in” and “get out” since the summer.

After the election debacle, it is understandable that not many people are plugged into the polls; but the polls on Britain in Europe are another matter altogether. They need to be watched with hawk-like attention because, right now, they are pointing Britain out of Europe. The trend towards “leave” or “get out” seems to coincide with Europe’s failure to cope with its refugee and migration crisis. Like it or not, public attitudes toward Europe have become deeply entwined with public attitudes toward migrants. Since the referendum is due within the next two years, this is not going to change much before polling day.

Lord Lawson to lead Conservative movement to leave EU Read more

Today’s news that Nigel Lawson has put himself at the head of the Conservatives for Britain group, which is campaigning for British exit, isn’t in the same league. Lawson, who was Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor for six years in the 1980s, is a politician from another era. He is clever and fun – a group of journalists of which I was part once voted him the least worst holiday companion among Thatcher’s cabinet ministers. He is also a late-in-life convert to Brexit who keeps a very low profile these days.Nevertheless, his entry into the fray is another reminder that the “out” campaign is already much busier and more focused than its “in” opponents.

This activity matters. It is just possible that this is the last party conference season before the referendum. David Cameron might even name the date for the vote in his speech on Wednesday. Most observers dismiss these speculations. But if they turn out to be true, Labour will have been looking resolutely in the wrong direction at a key time. Labour has formally come together around a policy to “remain”. But it found almost no time in Brighton to promote that message. Fringe meetings on Europe were full and enthusiastic, yet the leadership has gone awol on the issue. Corbyn barely acknowledged the subject in his speech while the new shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, avoided any mention at all.

There is certainly no such laziness in the Tory party. Whichever side of the European argument they are on, senior Tories are completely seized of the referendum’s importance in ways Labour has barely contemplated. That’s partly because the clock is ticking for the referendum. The vote has to take place before the end of 2017, but French elections in May of that year, followed by German elections in the autumn, mean that Cameron wants to ensure his negotiations and the UK campaign are not knocked off course by electoral calculations in Europe’s big-hitting states. But it’s also because, at the moment, the migration crisis is taking up all the political oxygen in and over Europe. Either way, 2016 will be Britain’s year of Europe, a prospect about which any Tory these days is bound to have mixed feelings.

George Osborne, acting in David Cameron’s interests and his own, is becoming the enforcer for the Tory ‘in’ campaign

This is therefore a Tory conference at which Europe matters. The issue may not dominate the big set speeches. But it will crackle through the off-stage politics. Europe matters because the rival “out” campaigns, which are competing to win official status in the referendum so that they can benefit from public money, will be trying from dawn to dusk to drum up custom from the delegates. These Tory delegates are officially supposed to back the prime minister’s new, but as yet un-negotiated, terms and “stay in”. But with Lawson’s campaign offering a more Tory safe haven for Eurosceptics compared with Ukip’s Leave.EU, there is little prospect of everyone remaining in line this week.

Europe is not just entwined with the migration crisis but with the Tory leadership election that will follow after the referendum and before the end of this parliament. The pressure on Cameron to allow ministers to campaign for the “out” side if they wish will be intense this week. But that pressure is as much about the dynamics of the leadership contest as about the Europe issue itself. George Osborne, acting both in Cameron’s interests and his own as the party’s continuity succession candidate, is becoming the enforcer for the Conservative “in” campaign. The chancellor has made clear that Tory MPs should not even think of slipping away into the “out” campaign. “He is telling people, ‘I am watching. I will remember And you need to realise I’m serious,’” says one party source.

Many ministers and former ministers, urged on by the anti-European press, want to defy this demand for unity behind the prime minister and his “in” campaign. Yet as long as the renegotiation terms have not been secured by Cameron, it is difficult for ministers to jump ship over a matter of conscience. Perhaps the most important person to watch in Manchester will be the London mayor, Boris Johnson. Johnson got a poll boost today from an Ipsos Mori survey that showed him as the most popular prospective Tory leader. The temptation for him to put himself at the head of the “out” campaign, and to then try to ride it to the party leadership and the prime ministership, would be almost irresistible to a saint, never mind to Johnson, who has in other respects been consistently outmanoeuvred by Osborne.

It is going to require big, authoritative performances from both Cameron and Osborne this week in order to hold the line on Europe, not least because the issue has the potential to drag the Tories to the right and subvert their one-nation and centre-ground claims. The energy in the referendum debate, for both “in” and “out”, is currently all on the Tory side. For those who see Britain’s future in Europe, this is an increasingly alarming prospect.