In recent weeks, discussion of the eurozone crisis has gone a bit quiet. Remember the heady days of late 2011, when 81 MPs rebelled against the government on the matter and the prime minister provoked everyone by wielding his treaty-change veto? It all seems a long time ago now.
It isn’t going to stay that way for much longer. Next week, David Cameron will attend another European summit. Before he goes, at least one MP is determined that he goes with a complete understanding of Parliament’s take on the matter this time. Or, as Bill Cash puts it to me, “we want to be certain there’s no stone left unturned in debating the question and enabling him to arrive at the right decision when he gets to the summit”.
The nature of this ‘right decision’ will be debated later today in the Commons during a topical debate on Europe. It’s come about in an unusual way, too – at extremely short notice, the backbench business committee has allocated time for it today. Cash and others have repeatedly raised the need for debates to take place before the prime minister goes to a summit, rather than for discussion to take place afterwards when he makes a statement on the outcomes. However, Cash says “the government has refused, over and over again”, which is why “for practical purposes” he’s gone via Natascha Engel and the backbench business committee to bring it about. The fact that the committee has granted his request is yet another example of how it is empowering backbench MPs.
Cash has a certain reputation when it comes to Europe. In his Guardian review of Cash’s recent biography of John Bright, Tristram Hunt called him a ‘methuselah of euroscepticism’. While there is substantial support in Parliament for Cash’s campaign to hold the government to account on the matter of Europe, there are whispers that Cash’s very doggedness on the matter makes him a poor frontman for the cause, a charge he absolutely rejects.
“I think that part of the debate is the vigorous presentation of arguments on both sides, on the basis of proper analysis, and I’ve never engaged in arguments that are not based on proper analysis,” he tells me. “The fact is that John Bright helped to create our modern democracy. I take the view that it’s our job to preserve it. And therefore we have to have a proper debate, and we have to put the arguments vigorously.”
With his knowledge and experience of the issue, he has “every right” to take part in the debate, he says. Securing the debate, though, is part of his duty too. At every turn, he sees threats to our parliamentary democracy that must be protected against – from the government who won’t allow pre-summit debates; from the EU, which he feels falls short on both democracy and accountability; from pro-EU campaigners who are “wedded to an ideology, which is extremely unwise”.
As with so many things when you’re dealing with a Conservative MP, it all comes back to a matter of ideology versus pragmatism. Cash rejects the label ‘eurosceptic’, saying he prefers to call himself a ‘eurorealist’ instead. Eurorealism, he says, “means a practical and pragmatic approach to dealing with the problems,” as opposed to the head-in-the-sand support for a state of affairs that “isn’t working” he observes in “EU integrationists”.
“The economic union hasn’t worked, and the political union is ideology and it’s doesn’t work, and it won’t work. I think it’s incumbent on both sides of the European debate to be pragmatic and realistic.” Since his own views are routed in such pragmatic observations, it’s clear that he believes the application of such an approach will lead to more people joining him in the eurorealist corner.
That isn't to say he's about to swell the ranks of UKIP any time soon - far from it. "I happen to believe that we will always be in a relationship with Europe," he says. "We always have been and we always will. It’s trading and it’s political cooperation. But it doesn’t mean that we have to accept all the assumptions that were made in 1956 or indeed in 1972."
The room where I met Cash in Parliament is just by a statue of John Bright. As we pass, Cash pats the foot of the statue affectionately. On the matter of British foreign policy, and particularly Irish home rule, Bright was a persistent and outspoken critic of his party’s view. It’s not difficult to see why Cash identifies with him so much.