10/11/2014
"You never get anywhere in life unless you have a clear strategy and plan. Frankly, Britain's future in Europe matters to our country and it isn't working for us at the moment and that's why we need to make changes", says
David Cameron at the CBI conference today.
"[We want to] belong to a Europe that addresses people's concerns, including concerns about immigration. Simply standing here saying I will stay in Europe and stick with Europe come what may is not a strategy, is not a plan and that won't work", he adds.
Then he tells us: "These things can be negotiated and we can then hold that in/out referendum and give people a proper choice about staying in a reformed European Union or opting not to belong to it".
Thus, having asserted that Brussels needed to address people's concerns about immigration, he declared: "We need to have proper immigration control. We need to do more, both outside the European Union and, frankly, inside the European Union".
Anyone with a brain, however, is fully aware that this isn't going to happen. The EU is not prepared to "address people's concerns about immigration" and, even if it was, this would require treaty change. There simply isn't time to complete the process for a new treaty between now and 2017, even if we started now.
In the event that we did gain some concessions, however, we are nowhere near addressing the entirety of the issues until we deal with the ECHR â and that wasn't mentioned by Mr Cameron is his speech. Yet the two (EU and ECHR) must be worked in together.
As a result, we're still in Mr Cameron's fantasy world. We'll take his 2017 referendum, thank you very much, but for the rest he is talking drivel. It does nothing but make him look foolish and shallow. But then, that is not exactly unusual.
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