Research

The post-election muddle in Spain was yet another setback in a year of cascading crises, said Charles Grant, director of the CER in London. "It has been an annus horribilis," Mr Grant said.

Simon Tilford from the CER said Spain is not out of the woods and the eurozone's elites are "mistaking a modest cyclical upturn for something more profound".

"The four horsemen of the apocalypse are circling," said Charles Grant, director of the CER in London, referring to the security threat raised by a newly assertive Russia, the chaotic influx of asylum seekers, Greece's calmed but far-from-solved financial crisis and Britain's future direction.

The CER has published research on Cameron's main renegotiation demands (limited in-work benefits for EU citizens, greater EU competitiveness, a greater role for national parliaments, exemption for UK from "ever closer union", better protection of those member-states outside the eurozone). According to the CER, the PM's particular fixation - restricting access to in-work benefits for EU citizens - isolates him entirely at Europe's diplomatic table.

The referendum campaign, when it finally gets into gear, will inevitably reflect this new context. The shift against EU membership in recent polls may already do so. At a meeting organised by the Centre for European Reform this week, Conservative speakers from all wings of the party argued that, irrespective of what the pro- or anti-Europeans may want, the vote will in fact be shaped by the migration issue. It is hard to disagree with that.

"Cameron's hardest battle is certain to be on welfare reform," said Agata Gostynska-Jakubowska of the Centre for European Reform think-tank. "He has made a fetish of in-work benefits in his negotiations on this issue, he is alone against 25 member-states."

“This initiative is significant,” said Charles Grant, the director of the Centre for European Reform, a pro-EU think-tank, “in that it recognises the reality that the European Economic Union is a multi-currency union, in which the various countries can choose their own, differing paths of integration.”
However, in a sign of the battles that lie ahead in the coming months, Mr Grant warned that the UK still faced stiff opposition from the more federalist-minded countries and the European Commission, whose president, Jean-Claude Juncker, is a constant champion for ‘more Europe’.

One therefore sadly has to agree with Simon Tilford of the Centre for European Reform, that the government’s obsession with immigration is a form of political displacement: UK leaders play along with a popular but false narrative that sees immigrants as the cause of the country’s ills, in order to deflect criticism for inadequate economic growth, insufficient housebuilding, and above all the loss of status of the white working class. It may be smart electoral politics. But it is the opposite of leadership.