DAVID CAMERON is facing a fresh revolt on Europe with Tory MPs set to call immediately after the next election for the UK to quit the EU.
Twenty MPs met last week and agreed to defy Cameron’s calls to renegotiate on a referendum to combat the Ukip threat. They will tell voters the prime minister should immediately invoke article 50 of the Lisbon treaty to trigger the start of a British withdrawal from the EU. Under the terms of the treaty this would give the UK two years to negotiate a British exit.
Up to 100 MPs are said to be prepared to use their personal election addresses to announce they would vote to leave the EU in Cameron’s promised 2017 referendum.
But on Wednesday, at a meeting of Tory rightwingers in Westminster’s Portcullis House, MPs discussed plans to go further.
One MP said: “The government would use article 50 if we don’t get what we want from a renegotiation. We’re saying just do it anyway in 2015. That triggers a two-year negotiation and puts a gun to the head of the EU.”
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Another MP said: “I’ve got a big Ukip vote in my constituency. There will be a lot of this in the marginal seats. You do what you need to do to win.”
The plan is a conscious echo of Eurosceptic defiance at the time of the 1997 election, when Conservative ministers and MPs openly rejected John Major’s policy on the euro because they were challenged by the Referendum party.
MPs say ministers are also expected to deviate from Cameron’s line next year.
Sir Gerald Howarth, a former minister, said he would wait to see what plans Cameron had for renegotiation before deciding what to tell voters. But he said: “Each Conservative MP and candidate is answerable to his or her electorate about what they put in their manifesto. If they don’t believe that Britain’s interests are served by remaining in the European Union then people — as they did in 1997 over the single currency — will make their positions clear.”