David Cameron never intended to give the Bloomberg speech — the moment ten years ago when he committed to holding a referendum on Britain’s EU membership. It had been planned for Amsterdam. Cameron wanted the venue to echo Margaret Thatcher’s famous “Bruges speech” in 1988 when she set her face against EU federalism.
Rome and Berlin were both considered before the Netherlands was selected. But shortly before what was supposed to be the “Amsterdam speech”, heavy snow and a terrorist attack in Algeria forced No 10 to postpone and find an alternative venue. So it was that Cameron set Britain on a path to Brexit, not at the heart of the continent but in a subterranean atrium of the London HQ of a US media