The Waugh Room

Wednesday 7th December 2011 | 13:02

That Boris-Euroscep Axis

When I clocked Boris's chief spinner Guto Harri at David Davis' pre-Christmas drinks last night, my antennae immediately twitched.

Here was a gathering of the troublesome Right, many of whom were singularly unimpressed by the PM's new line on the BBC 6 0'Clock News (that he would veto an EU treaty that didn't include 'safeguards' for the City and single market).

And here was a key Boris-ite, quaffing champers with DD - in a room full of backbenchers muttering mutinous thoughts over Europe.

Now, it's worth pointing out that Guto and DD go back a long way. But that may not dampen suspicions among Team Osborne that the Mayor is again on the march.

As it happens, Boris's brother Jo is admired by and often talked up by the Osborne camp. Yet as someone put it to me recently, "blood is thicker than water": if push came to shove, the Johnsons will stick to together. It's harder to think of a more close-knit political family.

This lunchtime, Boris indubitably put his tanks on Number 10's lawn over the issue of a referendum.

Boris told Wato:

"If there's a new treaty of the 27 that creates a fiscal union, we'd have absolutely no choice either to veto it or put it to referendum".

But he went even further in arguing that fiscal union itself was fundamentally undemocratic and economically disastrous. Or as Boris put it:

"We're in danger of saving the cancer and not the patient"

This is very much not in the Number 10 script, which still clings to the Osborne line that fiscal union is the 'inevitable logic' of monetary union.

But it is very much the same script of John Redwood and others who have warned the Chancellor to his face that backing fiscal union is 'insane'.

As ever, it's worth pointing out that the Right is far from homogenous: just like Liam Fox, IDS and Paterson are not natural bedfellows with DD, nor possibly with Boris. But the Mayor looks like he will try to forge an alliance with fellow Eurosceptics.

The one consolation for David Cameron today was that Labour MPs hadn't picked up on the bombshell that emerged during PMQs: Owen Paterson's Speccie interview claim that a referendum was 'inevitable'.

Coming just days after IDS's own strong words, this was yet another clue to Cabinet unease. We should have known it was coming, given concerns expressed this week by Conor Burns (Paterson's PPS).

Backbench unease today was all too clear in PMQs as disgruntled backbenchers fell over themselves to press Cameron on the issue.

Last night, word trickled out that ministers were hoping to have a meeting with the PM ahead of his Brussels trip to see just what his red lines were with Merkozy.

Talk is also abroad of Eurosceptics getting 100 signatures for a new motion demanding a referendum in the wake of the EU summit.

And here's a further thought: Paul Goodman reminded a Dods conference yesterday that under Tory rules, it was still possible for backbenchers to write in secret to the 1922 Committee chairman to demand the removal of a leader. He wasn't saying Graham Brady had any such letters, but if the PM returns empty handed from Brussels, who knows?

At the very least, next Monday's statement by the PM on the EU Summit could be a very bloody affair indeed.