David Cameron's 'renegotiation' of Britain's EU membership last year was so shoddy that he failed to present it as a core plank in his campaign to keep the UK inside the political union last year. It is no secret that there is a 'great Brexit debate' unfolding among political circles right now over what type of EU exit would be best for Britain. But if this country voted to remain last year, the focus would have been over what kind of membership is best for the British, and the former Tory leader's deal failed to change anything.
Yet Mr. Cameron could have won last year's EU Referendum if he retained the UK's membership of the European Economic Area (EEA), or the Single Market in other words.
The 'Norway model', if it is ever adopted in this country, would enable Britain to scrap the European Common Commercial Policy that hinders our ability to negotiate trade deals with other countries, it provides EEA nations with an emergency brake to prohibit significant immigration numbers and would allow the UK to influence which Single Market rules are accepted in the EEA through membership of the EEA Council. If the former Conservative prime minister returned from Brussels last year, he could have sold Britain a deal that would have appeared to the average voter as a genuine 'renegotiation.'
However, with the difficulties over taking back control over immigration, being bound by EEA institutions similar to those of the EU's like the Court of Justice and the warnings over WTO rules gradually being torn apart, it is clear a 'soft' Brexit is not in this nation's best interests.
This is why Theresa May will be correct to stick to her convictions over quitting both the EU and the EEA as part of a 'hard' Brexit.
'Cameron could have negotiated a 'soft' Brexit
Regardless of how one feels about what type of EU exit is best for this country, what is so hypocritical about the former prime minister's intervention is that he could have negotiated this option when he was in Brussels last February.
Buoyed and complacent about winning the 2014 Scottish referendum and the 2015 General Election, Mr. Cameron entered those meetings confident that whatever agreement he came to, the British people would vote for it. His over-confidence and lack of worldly experience finally caught up with him. In business, one does not take the first offer provided to them.
If the former prime minister had this kind of background before he entered politics, he might have realised Brussels was stitching him up, but he was too naive to contemplate that.
So if a 'soft' Brexit is so great, Mr. Cameron, why didn't you agree to this kind of deal last year? Unlike many in Conservatives for Liberty and Guido Fawkes begging him to return to front-line politics, claiming 'all is forgiven', there are still some Tories out there who remember how he sold this nation out once and we will not allow him to do it again.
