The difficulty with this issue has been adequately recognised by the 50 “mavericks”) is quite straightforward. The Conservative Manifesto pledged this:
“We will negotiate new rules with the EU, so that people will have to be earning here for a number of years before they can claim benefits, including the tax credits that top up low wages. Instead of something-for-nothing, we will build a system based on the principle of something-for-something. We will then put these changes to the British people in a straight in-out referendum on our membership of the European Union by the end of 2017.”
It then goes on in some detail about how that overall aim will be achieved. Some of the salient points:
“Changes to welfare to cut EU migration will be an absolute requirement in the renegotiation”
“We will introduce a new residency requirement for social housing, so that EU
migrants cannot even be considered for a council house unless they have been living in an area for at least four years”
“If an EU migrant’s child is living abroad, then they should receive no child benefit or child tax credit, no matter how long they have worked in the UK and
no matter how much tax they have paid”
“To reduce the numbers of EU migrants coming to Britain, we will end
the ability of EU jobseekers to claim any job-seeking benefits at all. And if jobseekers have not found a job within six months, they will be required to leave”
If Mr Cameron was honest he would accept that he has absolutely no chance of all (if indeed any) of these goals being achieved. These changes strike at the fundamental principles of the European Project. They will be resisted fiercely by many of the members (especially those who citizens are main beneficiaries of the UK’s largesse).
The danger is that he will return from negotiations with a few scraps of paper perhaps agreeing “in principle” to one or two of them, campaign for a resounding “Yes” vote on that basis only to see those principles shot down in flames in European Courts shortly afterwards. That’s the danger that the Fifty recognise and it would be worthy of them to stick to their guns. If it tears the Tories apart so be it. Far rather that than the electorate be fooled into voting to remain shackled to a moribund, corrupt, declining bloc for evermore.