So What Is Tory Policy on the EU?

So What Is Tory Policy on the EU?

Rt Hon David Cameron MP
House of Commons

cc: Rt Hon William Hague MP
Shadow Foreign Secretary

29 July 2008

May I ask you for clarification of the Conservative Partys current position on the UKs membership of the European Union?

You, Mr Cameron, have said many times in public that our membership of the European Union was not an issue so far as your party is concerned. Equally, Mr Hague has recently commented on the Lisbon Treaty situation in the following terms: “We would withdraw ratification by Britain and subject it to a referendum in which we would recommend a no vote?.

Mr Hague has also been quoted as saying that a future Conservative government would seek to restore full British control over employment law and social policy, whilst campaigning against what he calls “the centralising ratchet? of the European Union.

As I know from personal experience in Brussels, and your many elected Members of the European Parliament must have told you, such a policy is unachievable from within. The European Union does not work like that and was never intended to be open to such cherry-picking, especially retrospectively.

I appreciate that much of what politicians say in public is meant purely for effect. The two of you cannot mean what you say because the consequence would be one of two things: either you fail in achieving your objective, or you leave the European Union.

I am now asking you to address the reality. What is your policy?

Ashley Mote