April 18, 2018. Peers in the House of Lords, London, as the Government suffers its first defeat over the EU (Withdrawal) Bill when peers voted in favour of a customs union amendment.PA/Press Association. All rights reserved.In January 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron made a long-awaited speech at the Bloomberg offices on the UK’s future in the European Union. Cameron’s pitch that day was clear: the EU needed to adapt to the modern age; it needed to become more competitive and less bureaucratic; and it needed to embrace global trade.
As he argued for an in-out referendum, setting in train the series of events leading to the UK’s impending withdrawal, he claimed that Euroscepticism was rooted in a feeling that the EU had turned out very differently to the institution the UK public had originally voted for in 1975.
The EU had become increasingly bloated, inefficient, and meddlesome – the public wanted a return to a “common market” free of unnecessary rules and regulations. The single market, he exhorted, was incomplete; more had to be done to break down barriers in services, energy, and digital. At the same time, he railed against “complex rules restricting our labour markets” and “excessive regulation” holding businesses back and called for small firms to be exempted from more EU directives. He didn’t once mention immigration.
