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| Boris Johnson tells Cameron he must do more to win his support on EU | Boris Johnson tells Cameron he must do more to win his support on EU |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| Boris Johnson has told David Cameron that he needs to do more to win his support for the campaign to keep Britain in the EU. | |
| As the prime minister embarks on a final round of telephone calls with EU leaders before a summit in Brussels, he was told by the London mayor that he needed to strengthen his plans to reassert the sovereignty of the UK parliament. | |
| Nothing had changed, the mayor is said to have remarked during a Downing Street meeting on Wednesday, and reportedly added that more was needed. | Nothing had changed, the mayor is said to have remarked during a Downing Street meeting on Wednesday, and reportedly added that more was needed. |
| Related: Boris Johnson visits Downing Street for EU talks with Cameron - live | Related: Boris Johnson visits Downing Street for EU talks with Cameron - live |
| 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, 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.” |
| A source close to the mayor said he would live up to his commitment to outline his position on the EU “with deafening éclat” 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.” | A source close to the mayor said he would live up to his commitment to outline his position on the EU “with deafening éclat” 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.” |
| 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 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”. |
| 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’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.” |
| Letwin is understood to be examining two ways to deliver on this pledge: | Letwin is understood to be examining two ways to deliver on this pledge: |
| Related: Sorry Boris, this referendum is bigger than you | Rafael Behr | Related: Sorry Boris, this referendum is bigger than you | Rafael Behr |
| Johnson’s talks with the prime minister mainly focused on the sovereignty of parliament because that matter 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. | |
| 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 he can bring the greatest influence to bear on asserting the sovereignty of parliament. | |
| 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 and in the autumn started to champion the idea of reasserting the sovereignty of parliament. | |
| The discussions in Downing Street came as Donald Tusk, the European council president, prepared 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. | |
| The idea that the UK’s supreme court in Westminster might develop into a constitutional court in order to resist undesirable European laws has been floating around legal circles for some years. | |
| The example of the German constitutional court is frequently cited in the belief that its role allows it to dismiss rulings from the European court of human rights in Strasbourg that conflict with German national law. | |
| It has been taken up again by Cameron and Johnson in their latest arguments for protecting parliamentary sovereignty from the influence of the EU. | |
| One problem that proponents of the scheme face is that the UK does not have a constitution written down in any single document. | |
| Advancing the idea of a British constitutional court at an EU justice select committee hearing in the House of Lords earlier this month the justice secretary, Michael Gove, said it could give British judges the power to decide not to enforce EU law if it was contrary to basic principles. | |
| But Lady Kennedy, chair of the select committee, slapped down his legal interpretation, pointing out that the president of the German constitutional court stated two years ago that “EU law is accorded primacy over national law”. | |
| The atorney general, Jeremy Wright QC, last week implied that the proposal was not yet fully formed. “We are talking about judges in the UK having more power than they do, certainly in relation to EU law and human rights law,” Wright told the Guardian. | |
| “We want judicial authority to reside in this country rather than abroad. We will have to develop our thinking. It’s also being tested [in Germany] at the moment with regards to EU law.” |