Rightwing newspapers rage against David Cameron's EU stance
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Version 0 of 1. Rightwing newspapers are obsessed by the Brexit issue and their writers appear to be getting angrier about the issue week by week. The prime target for their rage is the prime minister. And, in most cases, the major concern is about immigration There is little sign of Christmas goodwill for David Cameron, who is getting an increasingly bad press from Tory-supporting titles over his European Union negotiations. And there are plenty of Conservative party members aiding and abetting the papers, some in public and several in private, as they seek to influence the course of the debate. Their statements, whether overt - such as the one by former defence secretary Liam Fox - or covert, formed the basis of news stories over the past two days. Meanwhile, political columnists have been vying with leader writers to see who can most embarrass Cameron. The Times reported on Monday’s front page that the prime minister was embroiled in a battle with Eurosceptic ministers over his attempts to secure welfare restrictions on EU migrants. The Daily Telegraph splashed on a claim that Downing Street has already prepared a “dossier” for distribution to voters before next year’s referendum explaining “why we need to stay in the EU”. The Daily Express picked up the Telegraph tale, referring to it as sign that Cameron was desperate. Its page 2 was dominated by story headlined “Let us campaign for EU exit or we quit, ministers warn PM.” And the Daily Mail also went with “Let ministers campaign to leave EU or they’ll quit.” Its editorial repeated that message: Cameron must lift his gag on Eurosceptic ministers. Non-Tory papers carried similar stories. Metro reported that Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling and Theresa Villiers “are said to be ready to quit the cabinet if they are stopped from joining the ‘leave’ campaign.” The Guardian’s story said “most Conservative MPs are leaning towards voting for the UK to leave the EU.” And the paper’s columnist, Matthew d’Ancona, saw Fox’s intervention as a key turning point in “the battle of Brexit.” But the real heat in this debate was generated by the rightwing papers. The Telegraph’s editorial argued that “Cameron courts rebellion by deciding that a document will be sent out to all voters ahead of the referendum advising them on the benefits of EU membership.” It urged the prime minister to allow ministers to “campaign whichever way they wish” and he should not “give the impression to Eurosceptics that the dice have been loaded against them.” The Sun, which ran a spread revealing where “top Tories stand on Brexit”, agreed: “Cameron must stop trying to hoodwink the nation and let us all, his own cabinet included, debate the country’s future properly.” It was scathing about his renegotiation, saying it “has lived down to our lowest expectations.. he has asked for virtually nothing and he will get less... “The few piffling concessions he is likely to win won’t change our status or ability to control immigration one bit.” The paper thought Fox “made good sense for the ‘leave’ lobby” and that the cabinet’s Eurosceptics “must be free to do the same.” The Sun’s News Corp stablemate, the Sunday Times, is so exercised about the issue that it carried six articles on the topic: a lengthy focus, Cameron’s migrant crisis; an editorial, Stay in or leave Europe: give us a positive case; a news story about Fox’s declaration of support for Brexit, plus a column by Fox, and others by Dominic Lawson and Adam Boulton. In varying ways, they all said roughly the same: Cameron is engaged in a sham negotiation that won’t make any difference to Britain’s relationship with the EU and won’t address the concerns of those voters concerned about immigration numbers. The editorial reiterated the paper’s position on the EU referendum: it isn’t convinced by the arguments on either side. But the Sunday Times’s impartiality isn’t too convincing either. It gave full sway to Fox’s polemic, Britain must go it alone - and shun the EU’s one-way road to integration. He likened Cameron to taking a “political begging bowl around European capitals” during the negotiating process. He wrote of the EU being “in a state of near permanent crisis” but that was beside the point - as is Cameron’s attempt at reform - because, for him, “it boils down to a simple question of sovereignty. “Britain’s laws should be made by those who are accountable to the British people, and by no others.” Lawson criticised Cameron for the basis of his in/out referendum pledge. It was done simply to choke off Ukip’s appeal to Conservative voters, and to what effect? He wrote: “This column has for the past three years argued that the prime minister would find it impossible to negotiate significant change in Britain’s terms of EU membership... “As that truth became ever more evident, the task for Agent Cameron has moved from mission impossible to mission inconsequential.” For Boulton, in a piece oddly headlined Brexit punks look for their Dirty Tory, saw the referendum as “a contrivance to manage the Conservative party rather than a response to an urgent demand from the British public.” Two Eurosceptic Sunday Telegraph columnists entered the fray with entirely predictable pieces. Janet Daley wrote that there was nothing in “Cameron’s proposals for a new relationship with the EU that is not rhetorical waffle” and that “all the claptrap about a new relationship with the EU is just blather.” And Christopher Booker, scorning Cameron’s “little ragbag of ‘demands’”, pointed to the EU’s future plans for treaty change in order to effect “a radical reorganisation of the EU into two groups.” Peter Hitchens, in the Mail on Sunday, called Cameron’s search for “an unattainable deal... the most desperate quest since The Lord Of The Rings. “And he is not going to be rescued by any wizards, elves, walking forests, giant eagles or ghost armies.” So where is Labour in this debate, asked the Independent on Sunday’s Jane Merrick. In her view, the party’s current stance “risks aiding Brexit.” Its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, “is known to be Eurosceptic”, she wrote, despite his pledge to campaign for an “in” vote. She thought Labour’s senior Europhile MPs ought to be making “a ground-level case for EU membership.” |