In her Bruges speech, delivered on September 20, 1988, Mrs (as she then was) Thatcher similarly insisted that "Britain does not dream of some cosy, isolated existence on the fringes of the European Community. Our destiny is in Europe, as part of the Community." But her tone was that of a scandalised patriot who is committed to an ideological agenda: "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels." Instead of restoring calm, she declared her willingness to fight. Just over two years later, she went down fighting: "The President of the Commission, Mr Delors, said at a press conference the other day that he wanted the European Parliament to be the democratic body of the Community. He wanted the Commission to be the Executive and he wanted the Council of Ministers to be the Senate. No, no, no." This outburst during her report to the Commons on the European summit in Rome led to the resignation of Sir Geoffrey Howe, which in turn precipitated her own downfall. 

Just as an Anglican can regard his Church as both Protestant and Catholic, or combining the best from those two traditions, so Cameron reckons he can be both British and European, especially if he can get away with redefining what the latter word means. He realises that his speech will strike some people as unorthodox: "The biggest danger to the EU comes not from those who advocate change, but from those who denounce new thinking as heresy. In its long history Europe has experience of heretics who turned out to have a point."

Already we can see the thrust of Cameron's argument, which is that by changing the EU he will help to preserve it. Far from being a heretic, he is actually the European establishment's best hope. He promises that if he is still Prime Minister, then two years into the next Parliament he will hold a referendum, in which the British people will have the choice either to accept the new membership terms which he has negotiated, or to leave. He has conceded the great demand of his Eurosceptic bankbenchers, and of UKIP, that there should be an In/Out referendum. But in the same breath, he indicates that he will be campaigning for us to stay in. He has turned the Eurosceptics' weapon on themselves: they can have their referendum, but the chances are that they will lose it. As long as he can negotiate a better deal, "I will campaign for it with all my heart and soul . . . I will not rest until this debate is won." The words "I will not rest" recall the hymn "Jerusalem", though what Blake actually wrote was "I will not cease".

Cameron will not be drawn on what would constitute a better deal. Like Harold Wilson, Prime Minister during the referendum campaign of 1975, he has to be able to declare, and millions of voters who feel nervous about "going it alone" have to be able to believe, that he has won worthwhile concessions. Mention of Wilson is a reminder that to resort to a referendum on Europe is a sign of weakness. In 1970, when Tony Benn first suggested the idea, Jim Callaghan saw it was "a rubber life-raft into which the whole party may one day have to climb", but Wilson rejected it. Hugo Young describes, in This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair, the "process of emasculation" during which Wilson was obliged, "under slow torture", to change his mind in order to have some chance of keeping the Labour party together. Less than six years after the referendum, the party split anyhow with the formation of the SDP.