Damian Green will say the 'hard-headed Conservative case' for Britain's membership of EU needs to be heard
A leading member of the "one nation" wing of the Conservative party will challenge a series of cabinet ministers who said recently that they would vote to leave the European Union if a vote were held now.
Damian Green, the policing minister, will say there is a "hard-headed Conservative case" for Britain's membership of the EU, which needs to be heard.
The intervention by Green in the annual Macmillan Lecture comes as Ed Miliband faces pressure from a new Labour group to hold a referendum on Britain's EU membership.
The Labour for a Referendum group, chaired by the former party donor John Mills, says that recent polling shows that the party cannot win the next election unless it offers a referendum. The group will say at its launch that a recent ComRes poll showed that 40% of people who voted Labour in 2010 want the party to endorse a referendum.
The prospect of a referendum on Britain's EU membership, promised by David Cameron in his EU speech in January, prompted Michael Gove and Philip Hammond to burnish their Eurosceptic credentials by saying they would vote to leave if a vote were held tomorrow. Gove and Hammond spoke out after Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former chancellor, became the most senior Tory to advocate withdrawal from the EU.
In his speech on Tuesday, Green will take issue with Lawson when he says Tories should work hard to ensure Britain remains a member of the EU.
The policing minister, who used to work for John Major in Downing Street, will say: "For those of us sympathetic to the European argument this is an opportunity to make our case, and the prime minister's case, that a properly reformed EU will be hugely to Britain's advantage.
"For too long only a few lonely voices in the Conservative party have made the case that we are better off in. Those of us who hold that view cannot wait for the few weeks before a referendum to argue our corner. There is a hard-headed Conservative case for Britain's membership of the EU, for all its imperfections, and it needs to be heard."
Green challenges one of the main arguments against Britain's EU membership, advocated in private by Cameron's former policy guru Steve Hilton, that Britain should focus on booming economies outside Europe.
"I have never understood how you make it easier to export to China by making it more difficult to export to Germany, and indeed the German example is surely one to follow. Last year Germany exported $804bn worth of goods to Europe, and another $519bn to the rest of the world. They are complementary markets, not alternatives."
But Green, who is a leading member of the European Mainstream Group of Tories launched earlier this year by the MP Laura Sandys, also has a tough message for pro-European veterans who have spoken out against Cameron's referendum plans.
It is understood he has in mind the former chancellor Lord Howe of Aberavon, who warned in an Observer article last month that the referendum "saga looks more like the politics of the French fourth republic than the serious practice of government".
Green will say it is right in the current climate to promise hold a referendum, as Cameron has, by the end of 2017. He will say: "We must all learn lessons. For years pro-Europeans opposed the idea of a referendum. But the strategy of negotiating a new settlement, and then putting that to British people, is clearly the right one for current times. Most British people want it to happen. So much has changed since the 1975 vote that it is time to put the argument again.
"I hope and expect that the outcome of this process will be to renegotiate, reform, and revalidate Britain's place in Europe. The prime minister has made clear that this plan will be central to Conservative policy up to and beyond the next election. It is time for the whole party to get behind it. And it is possible for those who hold the whole range of views on Europe to do so."
Cameron has challenged Labour and the Liberal Democrats to support Tory plans to legislate next month, through a private member's bill, to allow a referendum to be held by the end of 2017. Reported by guardian.co.uk 11 hours ago.
A leading member of the "one nation" wing of the Conservative party will challenge a series of cabinet ministers who said recently that they would vote to leave the European Union if a vote were held now.
Damian Green, the policing minister, will say there is a "hard-headed Conservative case" for Britain's membership of the EU, which needs to be heard.
The intervention by Green in the annual Macmillan Lecture comes as Ed Miliband faces pressure from a new Labour group to hold a referendum on Britain's EU membership.
The Labour for a Referendum group, chaired by the former party donor John Mills, says that recent polling shows that the party cannot win the next election unless it offers a referendum. The group will say at its launch that a recent ComRes poll showed that 40% of people who voted Labour in 2010 want the party to endorse a referendum.
The prospect of a referendum on Britain's EU membership, promised by David Cameron in his EU speech in January, prompted Michael Gove and Philip Hammond to burnish their Eurosceptic credentials by saying they would vote to leave if a vote were held tomorrow. Gove and Hammond spoke out after Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former chancellor, became the most senior Tory to advocate withdrawal from the EU.
In his speech on Tuesday, Green will take issue with Lawson when he says Tories should work hard to ensure Britain remains a member of the EU.
The policing minister, who used to work for John Major in Downing Street, will say: "For those of us sympathetic to the European argument this is an opportunity to make our case, and the prime minister's case, that a properly reformed EU will be hugely to Britain's advantage.
"For too long only a few lonely voices in the Conservative party have made the case that we are better off in. Those of us who hold that view cannot wait for the few weeks before a referendum to argue our corner. There is a hard-headed Conservative case for Britain's membership of the EU, for all its imperfections, and it needs to be heard."
Green challenges one of the main arguments against Britain's EU membership, advocated in private by Cameron's former policy guru Steve Hilton, that Britain should focus on booming economies outside Europe.
"I have never understood how you make it easier to export to China by making it more difficult to export to Germany, and indeed the German example is surely one to follow. Last year Germany exported $804bn worth of goods to Europe, and another $519bn to the rest of the world. They are complementary markets, not alternatives."
But Green, who is a leading member of the European Mainstream Group of Tories launched earlier this year by the MP Laura Sandys, also has a tough message for pro-European veterans who have spoken out against Cameron's referendum plans.
It is understood he has in mind the former chancellor Lord Howe of Aberavon, who warned in an Observer article last month that the referendum "saga looks more like the politics of the French fourth republic than the serious practice of government".
Green will say it is right in the current climate to promise hold a referendum, as Cameron has, by the end of 2017. He will say: "We must all learn lessons. For years pro-Europeans opposed the idea of a referendum. But the strategy of negotiating a new settlement, and then putting that to British people, is clearly the right one for current times. Most British people want it to happen. So much has changed since the 1975 vote that it is time to put the argument again.
"I hope and expect that the outcome of this process will be to renegotiate, reform, and revalidate Britain's place in Europe. The prime minister has made clear that this plan will be central to Conservative policy up to and beyond the next election. It is time for the whole party to get behind it. And it is possible for those who hold the whole range of views on Europe to do so."
Cameron has challenged Labour and the Liberal Democrats to support Tory plans to legislate next month, through a private member's bill, to allow a referendum to be held by the end of 2017. Reported by guardian.co.uk 11 hours ago.