Dr Dermot Hodson blogs on the UK Referendum on Europe
The UK Referendum on Europe: Prepare for the By No Means Inevitable
So the Prime Minister has finally agreed to a public vote on EU membership, or has he? Media coverage of David Cameron’s longsuffering Europe speech, finally delivered at Bloomberg HQ on 23 January, has focused on the Conservative leader’s commitment to hold a referendum by 2017. As is so often the case with political pledges of this sort, however, the devil is in the detail. At the present moment, there are at least three reasons why this referendum might not go ahead as planned. This blog post sets out these reasons before arguing that the Prime Minister nonetheless needs to change his rhetoric on the EU if he holds out any hope of turning around public opinion in the UK.
Read the rest of the blog on the website of the Centre for the Study of British Politics and Public Life, here.