Why David Cameron and Bill Cash are still arguing about Europe

During a near two-hour interrogation by the House of Commons European scrutiny committee, foreign secretary David Cameron suggested that the new European entry-exit system could mean long delays for British travellers when implemented, and that UK citizens landing at Gibraltar could be turned away by EU Frontex border guards under a deal to allow “a fluid border” between the territory and Spain. It all begs some awkward questions about whether we will ever “get Brexit done” completely, and how the Conservative Party can ever escape the long and malign shadow it has cast.

It was set up originally as the Commons select committee on European legislation in 1985, and was to undertake detailed examination of laws and regulations emanating from Brussels. It has since widened its remit.

It rather proves the point that the UK can never ignore its largest trading partner and that the Brexit agreements reached in 2020-21 left a number of seemingly insoluble problems. Hence the original arrangements in the Northern Ireland protocol of the UK-EU withdrawal agreement have had to be replaced by the Windsor Framework; numerous checks and controls remain in limbo; the status of Gibraltar’s border with the EU is unresolved; and a “technical” bilateral review of Brexit is due to begin next year.

So the scrutiny committee remains in place, with veteran Eurosceptic William Cash as chair, and with a modified remit to “monitor the legal and/or political importance of new EU legislation and policy and assess their potential implications for the UK. It may also scrutinise the implementation of the withdrawal agreement, the protocol on Northern Ireland and the UK-EU trade and cooperation agreement”.

Indeed, but only Cash seems to be deriving much pleasure from it, teasing Cameron about whether the foreign secretary had read the constitution of Gibraltar (“not recently”) or the Gibraltar Civilian Air Regulations (Cameron undertook to do so).

Probably both men would agree that the last thing they expected the day after the 2016 EU referendum, lost by Cameron after it had been forced on him by Cash and his allies, was that they would still be trading blows in a Commons committee room almost a decade later. They would certainly be surprised that Cameron, returning as foreign secretary, would find himself asking about “exports” of organic pet food from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. Maybe not the future Cameron envisaged for himself; nor the kind of Brexit Cash, the Tory right and the DUP had in mind.

It is now almost 20 years since Cameron, with those such as Cash in mind, warned his party about its obsessions with Europe. In his first speech to a Tory conference as party leader in 2006, Cameron talked about his party’s past defeats by Tony Blair in words that read chillingly prophetic now: “Instead of talking about the things that most people care about, we talked about what we cared about most. While parents worried about childcare, getting the kids to school, balancing work and family life – we were banging on about Europe. As they worried about standards in thousands of secondary schools, we obsessed about a handful more grammar schools… As rising expectations demanded a better NHS for everyone, we put our faith in opt-outs for a few. While people wanted, more than anything, stability and low mortgage rates, the first thing we talked about was tax cuts. For years, this country wanted – desperately needed – a sensible centre-right party to sort things out in a sensible way. Well, that’s what we are today.”

Nobody, with the possible exception of Nigel Farage, “banged on” about Europe more than Cash. And yet here the pair still are, in 2024, banging away about subjects that rarely figure on the list of voters’ concerns. Plus ca change, as they say in Eurosceptic circles.

Some sort of messy compromises, and continuing added costs and inconvenience to British businesses and travellers. Rejoining the EU is out for the next parliament at least, whoever wins the election. Cash has just turned 84 but is as preoccupied as ever about the EU. He stands down from the Commons at the next election, but will no doubt be appointed to the House of Lords in due course, where there may be further opportunities for Lord Cash to debate the nature of sovereignty with Lord Cameron.