The beginning of the end for Cameron?

[Doggy Styles]

For the Eurosceptics to prove they're rational will have to ensure this doesn't happen. I don't think they will; they applauded Margaret Thatcher when she signed away most of the UK's powers which as you know is the Maastrict treaty. But they accepted it because she waved her handbag around and made Eurosceptic rhetoric when she did it.

No, as I recall John Major signed the Maastricht treaty, and the Eurosceptics didn't applaud him for it, they ended up wrecking his government. He famously called them bastards for it.

[BlasterBates]

No, as I recall John Major signed the Maastricht treaty, and the Eurosceptics didn't applaud him for it, they ended up wrecking his government. He famously called them bastards for it.

Margaret Thatcher signed the main treaty which was the Single European Act. That is where the UK gave up it's "sovereignty", the Maastricht treaty was mainly about the single currency, which the UK didn't sign up to, but even though Margaret Thatcher signed away Britain's sovereignty it was John Major who got the boot by the "bastards" because he "didn't swing his handbag around"; even though he conceded nothing. It does seem Cameron will probably get away with a pro-European stance, as Margaret Thatcher did, as long as he blusters out some anti-European rhetoric.

The single European Act

The Treaty was drafted with the aim of implementing parts of the Dooge report on institutional reform of the Community and the European Commission's white paper on reforming the Common Market. The resultant treaty aimed to create a "Single Market" in the Community by 1992, and as a means of achieving this adopted a more collaborative legislative process, later known as the cooperation procedure, which gave the European Parliament a real say in legislating for the first time and introduced more majority voting in the Council of Ministers.[1] Under the procedure the Council could, with the support of Parliament and acting on a proposal by the Commission, adopt a legislative proposal by a qualified majority, but the Council could also overrule a rejection of a proposed law by the Parliament by adopting a proposal unanimously.[2]

i.e. the UK gave up it's rights to the EU.