British Prime Minister David Cameron took on critics in his own Conservative party yesterday, saying it would be wrong for Britain to leave the European Union.
The Prime Minister said he was able to negotiate a better deal with Brussels and it was wrong to say Britain should leave the European Union.
We shouldn’t spend our time endlessly bashing banks and financial institutions
He described as pessimists those who argue Britain should leave the bloc and say there is no prospect of reforming the EU.
“I think they are wrong ... I think it is possible to change and reform this organisation,” Cameron told an investment conference.
Cameron came under renewed pressure from EU sceptics this week when former finance minister Nigel Lawson said the prime minister’s plan to renegotiate Britain’s commitments to the EU before a planned membership referendum in 2017 were doomed to fail and the country should leave the bloc.
Cameron used his speech to underscore his determination to keep on narrowing Britain’s budget deficit at a “sensible and measured pace” and to help push for new trade deals between the EU and the US and Canada.
The British PM also said he would continue to defend Britain’s financial services industry against some European measures such as a planned financial transaction tax which has been agreed by most countries in the euro zone and would affect the City of London.
“We shouldn’t spend our time in politics endlessly bashing banks and financial institutions. If you want the economy to recover and if you want the economy to grow, you have got to play to your strengths,” Cameron said.
London mayor Boris Johnson, speaking at the same conference, said the party should rally around Cameron and his plan.
But Johnson, who is believed to harbour ambitions to succeed Cameron as leader of the Conservative party, also said Britain should be ready to “walk away” from the EU if it fails in its renegotiation bid.
“This is not for Britain the existential question it was... when we joined at the height of the Cold War,” he said. “We now live in a globalised economy where the real growth markets are to be found outside the European Union.”
Membership of the EU has been a divisive issue for the Conservatives for decades and Cameron hopes the referendum will settle it once and for all.