David ‘Cast Iron Guarantee’ Cameron showed a bit of ankle to his poor, deluded party, by claiming that he was all for a referendum on the EU. So we may finally get a referendum, but it won’t be the referendum. Oh no, that one would be too risky. What Cameron is promising us (if that verb is applicable to the man) is a chance to approve a “renegotiated” relationship with the Beast of Brussels.

So, rather than a choice between national independence or our place as a province of “the world’s first non-imperial empire”, as Barosso called it, our choice will be the status quo or the supposedly new and improved “renegotiated” model, which will be all dolled up to offer just enough to satisfy the muddle-headed that it is the best of both worlds. The hardcore patriots will thus be forced, if they wish to bother voting, to either kick the betraying bastard politicians and support the status quo, which they have been fighting for year after year, or sign on to a superficially different, but otherwise equally bad, bright, shiny, polished turd of a renegotiated contract.

Thus, the only people who care about the issue of the country’s membership of the EU will have nothing to vote in favour of, and no real reason to vote at all, and everyone else will stay at home anyway. Still, nothing is ever certain in politics, when the many-headed monster is involved, so I won’t be holding my breath for an announcement any time soon. Maybe Cameron will put some kind of pledge in the manifesto for the next election, to hold one in the event of a successful renegotiation, hoping that this meagre scrap will be enough to keep wavering Tories on board, and no doubt it will.