WEEKEND ESSAY

This speech started Brexit — could it have been different?

David Cameron knew he was playing with fire by promising voters a referendum on EU membership but he surely didn’t think his party would be in denial over the consequences a decade later, writes Francis Elliott

David Cameron hoped to seize the initiative on Europe by promising a referendum in his 2013 Bloomberg speech. He hoped to echo Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges speech of 1988. At the time immigration was dogging the Tories
David Cameron hoped to seize the initiative on Europe by promising a referendum in his 2013 Bloomberg speech. He hoped to echo Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges speech of 1988. At the time immigration was dogging the Tories
GETTY IMAGES; PA;
The Times

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