I was rather pleased with my train metaphor yesterday. That was the one where I equated Cameron having Britain staying in the EU but not progressing towards political union with him sitting on the Brighton train and denying he was going to Brighton.

Now we have Cameron in Davros telling the "colleagues" that "any attempt to force countries into ever-deeper political union is a mistake".

"Britain is a major European player on all of the issues where Europe needs to act - being more competitive, fighting terrorism, combating climate change - we are right out there leading the arguments, making the arguments", he says, "and that is the sort of political action that we need. But a centralised political union? Not for me, not for Britain".

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I'm afraid Cameron is on the "Ghost Train" (the old Arthur Askey film).

It's a train that pretends to be one thing (ie supernatural) but in reality it is carrying weapons for the enemy.

Don't worry too much until they start waxing poetic about the "train going into a tunnel". At that point, you will all be well and truly screwed...

http://vimeo.com/7819836

I lived in Worthing for three years and our train split at Haywards Heath at off peak times.

I can't help but think that David Cameron is playing a dangerous game with this. We all accept that there is no such thing as a renegotiation, and he must know this. Surely he can't be that thick can he? To my mind its almost like he is daring the Colleagues to say an absolute no. Is he playing a double bluff here?

Or they do something sneaky like a deal brokered by Merkel that is just enough for them to win. At which point it will be another 10 years before the EU is so bad for us that we fall out. Imagine the reaction here if we had a puppet PM foisted on us, which could happen after another 5 years of Labour

The problems with the Euro are only in abeyance at present. Don't forget it is bonus time and no one wants to spook the bosses or market before they have the money in the Bank. European banks now pay out a month later thanks to that idiot Brown so this phoney time could extend to April. Thanks to that idiot many ordinary bank workers have forever lost a months worth of bonus. It may not amount to much for most but I haven't had a wage rise for 3 years whilst the train fares have rocketed.

A large part of his problem is the tightrope that the Conservatives have walked for years, going along with the EU and integration, but pretending they don't like it and there's a compromise position which they'll get round to pursuing when conditions are right and the readings of chicken entrails augur well.

If he came down clearly on the side of in or out, he would split the Conservative Party and probably break it apart.

I'd say people like Cameron genuinely don't understand much about the EU and don't want to, but his main objective is to put the problem off by continuing to walk the tightrope. The foremost consideration is to keep the Tories together until the GE and with any luck, his sort of, maybe promise will be convincing enough to stop UKIP doing too much damage.