Why are we having a referendum?

That is probably a question David Cameron is asking himself and the answer is not straightforward.
The British public have not had a direct say on our relationship with Europe since 1975, when we voted
to stay in what was then the European Economic Community. In the intervening years, Europe has
changed.
Then, we were voting on joining a Common Market of nine member states, with a population of 250
million. Today, the EU has 28 member states (19 of which share a single currency) and a population of
more than 500 million. Importantly, successive treaties since 1975 have seen the European Union
transform from a trading arrangement to a fully-fledged political union, giving Brussels influence over
many other areas of policy. Ever since the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, which created the modern EU, there
have been those calling for another vote to take into account how things have has changed, with
Eurosceptics claiming that membership now represents an unacceptable transfer of powers from our
Parliament to Brussels. It has been a running sore for the Conservative Party in particular, with many MPs
and much of the membership never fully reconciled to our membership.
But a long period of economic growth (until the financial crash of 2008) under two pro-EU Labour Prime
Ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, gave credence to the idea that being in the EU and its Single
Market was good for Britains prosperity, and the issue was placed on the backburner for nearly 20 years.

So why has it resurfaced now?

When Mr Cameron entered Downing Street in 2010 he was determined to be a Conservative Prime
Minister whose tenure was not marred by internal party warfare over Europe or as he put it he didnt
want the Tories to bang on about Europe. He hoped that the presence and necessity of Lib Dem
support for the Coalition would reduce the power of the anti-Europeans on his own backbenches and
allow him to concentrate on his domestic reform agenda.

What went wrong?

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Jeremy Corbyn and Joey Essex meet to discuss the EU

referendum
In a word: Events.
Mr Cameron and the political class in general underestimated the groundswell of public resentment
caused by the influx of European migrants to the country since accession of Eastern European countries
in the early 2000s.
To begin with Polish plumbers, builders, waitresses and bar staff were generally welcomed. But the
financial crash of 2008 and the fall in living standards it resulted in stoked resentments which politicians
from all three major parties were too slow to recognise and respond to.
Into this vacuum stepped Nigel Farage and Ukip. In the 2010 general election the party polled around
three per cent just one per cent more than they had done five years before. But by 2012 Ukip fortunes
had been transformed and some surveys suggested the party was being supported by up to 15 per cent of
the electorate.
For Tory MPs facing re-election this looked ominous. They were worried, not that Ukip would take their
seats but they would take enough of their votes to hand victory to Labour.
In private, and sometimes in public, they demanded that the Prime Minister give them something in their
armoury to fight off the challenge and that something was an EU referendum.
This would allow Tory candidates to go into 2015 able to assure their own anti-European supporters that
only a vote for the Conservatives would give them a chance to have a definitive say over Britains future
in Europe.
And so, in January 2013, Mr Cameron made his fateful pledge of an in/out referendum if the
Conservatives won the 2015 election.
So was he in favour of a referendum himself?

We dont know for sure but the answer is probably not. That being said, Cameron certainly felt he had
little choice over the issue. His attempt to make the Europe question go away by promising a referendum
if a UK Government ceded more powers to Brussels did not go far enough for Tory Eurosceptics.
Meanwhile, there was a necessity to shoot the Ukip fox. Some of those around Mr Cameron including
the Chancellor George Osborne - are understood to have urged him not to go ahead with the pledge
warning that it could have disastrous unintended consequences but he thought it was a gamble worth
taking.
Why is that?

The main reason is that Mr Cameron thought it would never happen. He calculated that Labour under Ed
Miliband would not back the plan and the Lib Dems were passionately opposed. Back in 2013 no senior
Tory including Mr Cameron realistically thought they had a chance of winning an overall majority in
2015 and that another Coalition was likely. That being the case, most people believed that the referendum
pledge would be the first thing to go in Coalition talks.

That was a bit of a miscalculation then?

Yes. But when they did win in 2015 Mr Cameron knew he had to embrace the referendum and ensure
that he won it. A vote was promised by the end of 2017, and Mr Cameron embarked upon his muchvaunted EU renegotiation a long period of bargaining with the EUs other leaders over the terms of
Britains membership. Throughout, he maintained that his decision about which side to back in the
referendum would only be made after the new terms were settled.

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Eurosceptics in his own party werent convinced and were unsurprised when, in February, he emerged
from marathon talks in Brussels with a new deal for Britain which he said was a strong basis for him
and his government to back a Remain vote. Critics were not convinced that the changes amounted to
much. Nevertheless, eager for the issue not to dominate the political agenda for any longer than necessary,
Mr Cameron set an early referendum date 23 June 2016.

And will the referendum be the final word on the matter?

Watch this space. Mr Cameron has ruled out a second referendum saying this is a once in a generation,
once in a lifetime decision. Ukip leader Nigel Farage sees it differently, suggesting that a narrow Remain
win would result in an irresistible clamour for another vote. Equally, there are those who wonder whether
a victory for Leave would prompt a big new offer from Brussels that could keep us in the EU on very
different terms with restrictions on immigration, for example.
But for now, both camps are, officially at least, working on the assumption that the British peoples
decision on 23 June will indeed be final.