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David Cameron holds talks with Boris Johnson over EU reforms Boris Johnson tells Cameron he must do more to win his support
(about 2 hours later)
David Cameron is making final efforts to bolster support for his proposed European Union reforms before a crunch summit. Boris Johnson has told David Cameron during a meeting at Downing Street that more was needed to win his support in the referendum campaign to keep Britain in the EU.
As fraught negotiations continued in Brussels on Wednesday over the details of the package, Boris Johnson was among the senior figures called to Downing Street for talks with the prime minister. As the prime minister embarks on a final round of telephone calls with EU leaders before a summit in Brussels, the London mayor told him he needs to strengthen his plans to reassert the sovereignty of the UK parliament.
Nothing had changed, the mayor is said to have remarked and reportedly added that more was needed.
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The mayor of London is yet to make clear which side he will back in the in/out referendum on Britain’s EU membership, with a senior source saying he remains “genuinely conflicted”. Johnson, who has yet to announce publicly which side he will back in the referendum campaign, broke off from a half-term holiday with his family to meet the prime minister following a telephone call on Tuesday. As he left the meeting in No 10, Johnson said: “I’ll be back – no deal as far as I know.”
Johnson interrupted a half-term break for about 40 minutes of discussion with Cameron. Brexit campaigners are hopeful that he will provide a high-profile focus for the leave campaign. A source close to the mayor said he would live up to his commitment to outline his position on the EU “with deafening eclat” on Friday if the prime minister secures a deal at the EU summit, which opens in Brussels on Thursday afternoon. The source said: “The mayor will make everything abundantly clear by the end of the week if the prime minister gets a deal on Friday. He is genuinely undecided.”
Speaking to waiting reporters as he left, he said: “I’ll be back, no deal.” Johnson told Cameron more work was necessary on his plan to assert parliament’s sovereignty. Oliver Letwin, the prime minister’s policy chief, has been tasked with outlining measures to deliver on his pledge to put that issue “beyond doubt”.
Johnson, who spoke to the prime minister on the phone on Tuesday, is not expected to make his position public until a final agreement has been reached between EU leaders. Cameron’s vow in the Commons earlier this month came after Johnson asked him to explain how his EU reforms would “assert the sovereignty of this House of Commons and these Houses of Parliament”. Cameron replied: “I am keen to do even more to put it beyond doubt that this House of Commons is sovereign. We will look to do that at the same time as concluding these negotiations.”
Cameron is spending the day at No 10 as he prepares to meet fellow leaders on Thursday for talks on the UK’s demands. Agreement at the summit would open the door to announcing the referendum. Letwin is understood to be examining two ways to deliver on this pledge:
The European council president, Donald Tusk, warned the prime minister that he has an “extra mile” to go to persuade eastern European leaders to agree to reforms, particularly regarding restrictions to benefits for EU migrants.
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Tusk is expected to publish the final draft of the proposed deal later, with EU leaders scheduled to discuss them on Thursday evening. Johnson’s talks with the prime minister mainly focused on the sovereignty of parliament because that is a matter that rests entirely with the UK government and is not part of the EU negotiations. But Downing Street believes it has to chart a careful course to win over Johnson without alarming EU leaders who may fear that Britain is seeking to overturn one of the key principles of the EU – the primacy of EU law.
If he secures a deal, Cameron will call a cabinet meeting, effectively firing the starting gun on the referendum campaign. Eurosceptic ministers will then be free to campaign for a leave vote in the poll, expected on June 23. The London mayor also asked the prime minister about the state of the negotiations on restricting in-work benefits, asserting the role of national parliaments, giving Britain an opt-out from the EU’s commitment to ever closer union and promoting competitiveness. But the EU negotiation package was not the main part of their discussions because the mayor accepts that he can bring the greatest influence to bear on asserting the sovereignty of parliament.
Downing Street said there “are still details to be nailed down” to secure an agreement this week, but insisted that Cameron’s talks with key figures in Brussels on Tuesday had been useful. Johnson, who has his eye on succeeding Cameron, has been trying to find a way of supporting the UK’s membership of the EU while shoring up his base among grassroots Tory Eurosceptics. Over the summer, he met the Vote Leave campaign director Dominic Cummings to discuss his idea for two referendums. But he backed away from this idea that the referendum would be a definitive decision. In the autumn, he started to champion the idea of reasserting the sovereignty of parliament.
The discussions in Downing Street came as Donald Tusk, the European council president, prepares to publish a final draft of his proposals for a new settlement for the UK ahead of the summit. Tusk said on Tuesday that EU leaders would have to go an “extra mile” to reach an agreement.