By BAGEHOT
DAVID CAMERON returned home from Brussels last night to combined evaluations. The likes of Nigel Farage were constantly going to pan his “renegotiation” of Britain’s EU subscription (and did not dissatisfy). Less foreseeable was the bleak decision from usually friendlier sources. “Thin Gruel” ran the leader heading in the Times, while the Spectator considered the EU to have “called the prime minister’s bluff”. Michael Gove, a close ally who hadactually been anticipated to bite his Eurosceptic tongue, has simply stated for the Out project (his declaration adhering, practically down to specific sentences, to the whiggish case for Brexit put to me justrecently by Dominic Cummings, his confidante and previous consultant). Meanwhile Boris Johnson might quickly twist his (in truth Europhile) tongue into an opportunistic recommendation for Brexit. And even Andrea Leadsom, the Conservative MP who for years hasactually beaten the drum for renegotiation, stated for Out this earlymorning minutes after Mr Cameron had revealed in Downing Street that the referendum would take location on June 23rd.
Spare the prime minister little pity, for he hasactually been on what politicalleaders like to call a “journey”. Before January 2013, when he revealed his strategy to renegotiate Britain’s EU subscription and put the outcome to a referendum, the subject had not been not one of the lotsof about which the prime minister understood or idea much. Downing Street’s supply of proficiency and contacts was bad. Thus hindered, its EU policy to date had amounted to tactical raids; even the 2011 British block on an EU rescue offer, consequently dressed up as a coup, was a piece of brinkmanship gone incorrect. Watching the Bloomberg speech in 2013, I sat behind Daniel Hannan, a infamously anti-EU Tory MEP, who was buried in his phone busily preparing and redrafting a tweet offering his viewpoint. As Mr Cameron went on, the draft endedupbeing gradually more passionate. This was an early (and not separated) indication that, under-briefed and over-optimistic, Mr Cameron was permitting expectations get much, much too high.
Renegotiation, schmenegotiation
So they showed. The story of the steppingin years is that of his progressive acknowledgment that alliance-building and compromise, not foot-stamping and unilateralism (or the “Cameron Show”, as Germany’s Spiegel exasperatedly calls it), is the method to get things done in Brussels. As the renegotiation tailored up after the election last year, the prime minister employed brand-new consultants, explored the continent nurturing relationships and slowly moderated his needs. The outcome is a modest however reputable bundle that would haveactually gone down muchbetter at home had the prime minister levelled with his celebration, and what the political researcher Tim Bale calls “the celebration in the media”, earlier in the procedure.
The great news is that the renegotiation is of secondary importance in the impending referendum project. Much of the electoral landscape is currently repaired; as I argue in my column this week, the excellent European divide in Britain