David Cameron has jetted off to Europe again, this time to talk to Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban about his “renegotiation” of Britain’s European Union membership.
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A strong and popular Prime Minister is much more likely to be able to persuade wavering voters that it is best to stay in the EU.Cameron thus wants to call a vote before his popularity declines and his position within the party and Parliament is further weakened.
But in an interview on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, Mr Cameron was asked whether the Government was preparing contingency plans for a so-called Brexit. Yet these arguments ignore the fact that non-member countries such as Norway must make similar budgetary contributions to member nations – and sign up to numerous same rules – to gain full access to the single market.
However, a key sticking point for several European Union members is Mr Cameron’s aim to restrict welfare benefits for European Union migrants for their first four years in Britain.
Speaking in Budapest, Cameron said the welfare plans remained on the table but that he was “open to alternative solutions”, while holding out the possibility that a deal could take longer than the February summit.
Britain supports the concept of free movement, many British citizens go and live and work elsewhere in Europe.
“I am confident we can reach agreement because there is a bigger picture here as well, which is the importance of Britain remaining in a reformed European Union, but also for Europe…” Cameron who is on a visit to Germany, argued that London’s proposals would benefit the bloc and the United Kingdom both.
The in-out referendum has been promised by the end of 2017. “So I am negotiating changes which will address the concerns of the British people”, Mr. Cameron wrote in an article published on Thursday in Germany’s Bild magazine.
None of the EU’s other 27 members wants to see the exit of Britain – a linchpin member since joining in 1973, though not a member of either the euro zone or the borderless Schengen Area. “The discussions are going well”, Cameron said in Wildbad Kreuth, Bavaria, after what he said was an “excellent meeting” with German Chancellor Angela Merkel over dinner on Wednesday.
In a keynote speech on Monday, the Prime Minister will say: “In the end, getting parenting and the early years right isn’t just about the hardest-to-reach families; it’s about everyone. We do feel the pressure of excessive migration that we have had in recent years”.
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The previous evening Johnny Heald, of surveyors ORB International, said: “The Prime Minister’s arrangements with his European associates give off an impression of being essential in keeping away from Brexit”.
