News is leaking out of Downing Street on purpose that Cameron has four key ‘demands’ as the price for the UK staying in Europe. They make little sense.
Apparently he is to seek an ‘explicit statement’ that the pound will remain a legitimate currency and that the EU will remain a multi-currency union. This is absurd. There is no way Europe in whatever form and however styled can even think of declaring the pound ‘illegitimate’ in fact, in law, in practice or even in fancy. Any more than some nut case in Brussels can ring up the President of the United States are declare the dollar illegitimate. If Cameron thinks such stuff is other than laughable, he must have lost his marbles.
Next come the usual repatriation of regulatory powers and some protocol that allows Euroland to federalise while leaving non-euro countries within the market. But this is all part of the ongoing conversation anyway and we do not need an in or out referendum to drive it. As for protections for the City of London? Whatever its faults its strength lies in its skills and reach all across the world built up over centuries. The City has the power to damage Brussels and whatever financial power it thinks it has, many time greater than the reverse, so this promise is another empty vessel.
In truth there is only one subject on which the result of the referendum will turn. That is immigration. And on this we hear nothing. Unless Cameron can deliver on that he stands a real chance of losing.