Cameron challenged from within on EU membership

British prime minister David Cameron’s control over his own party looks set to be challenged after a rebel lawmaker yesterday launched a campaign to bring forward a planned referendum on EU membership to next year.

The move sets up a parliamentary showdown between rival factions of the Conservative Party in November that may reopen divisions Cameron tried to heal earlier this year.

In May — to pacify rebellious eurosceptics in his party and help win back voters lost to anti-EU rivals ahead of a 2015 election — Cameron supported draft legislation promising a referendum on EU membership by the end of 2017.

But on Sunday, Conservative lawmaker Adam Afriyie said the promise was not enough and put forward his own proposal to bring a vote forward to October 2014.

“It’s in our national interest to resolve this issue as soon as possible to create the certainty and stability our country needs for the future,” Afriyie wrote in The Mail on Sunday.

“The fact is, the British people are not convinced there will be a referendum at all if we wait until after the next general election. So many things can change.”

Cameron’s office insisted the proposal would not be allowed to pass. But the row highlights long-standing party fractures over Europe which contributed to the downfall of former prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major and still pose a risk to Cameron.

The legislation currently under discussion is seen by some as symbolic because it could not bind future governments. Afriyie’s proposal, which takes the form of an amendment to that draft law, could be debated in parliament on November 8.

Interior minister Theresa May told the BBC yesterday: “I think Adam has got it wrong, I think we need to be negotiating that settlement with the European Union and putting to the British people the Europe of the future and not the Europe of the past.”

The Conservatives trailed Labour by five percentage points in poll results published yesterday.