Cameron says Britain seeks more flexible European Union

Cameron’s letter is expected to expand his demands in four broad areas where he wants reform: competitiveness, sovereignty, social security and economic governance.

Cameron made clear that he would campaign enthusiastically to remain in the European Union if his negotiations succeeded.

Britain is suffering a crisis of confidence in foreign policy that leaves it “sidelined in Syria, ineffective in Ukraine, unwilling in Europe, and inimical towards refugees”, a report by a few of Britain’s most senior former diplomats, intelligence officers and foreign policy academics has warned. “We expect Cameron to get what he’s asking for, but what he’s asking for is trivial”.

The PM added that “the status quo isn’t good enough for Britain”.

The prime minister will deliver his warning on Tuesday to coincide with a letter to the European Council president setting out the changes he wants for the UK.

During a speech at a Confederation of British Industry conference in London, Cameron said he was “deadly serious” about securing European Union reforms, adding that if renegotiations failed Britain “will have to ask ourselves – ‘is this organization for us?'” “When the Prime Minister comes back with his European Union reform package, the CBI will consult its members again”.

“We accept that given the timescale we set it’s not practical to have a treaty change ratified in that period”.

The campaign group said in the year’s worth of CBI press releases, the leading business lobby did not challenge a single one of the 2,337 new laws the European Union passed – or a single one of 852 new European Union court judgments issued in the same period. “We managed to get our passes and we pretended to be businessmen”, Mr Sheppard said.

“We don’t want to be excessively prescriptive at the beginning of the discussion”.

“The argument is how we could be best off”, he told the group, many of whose members are concerned about the economic consequences of a possible “Brexit”.

They turned out to be a couple of young men claiming to be from an organisation called “students4britain”, who said they were protesting against the CBI misrepresenting the views of British businesses. “If we can’t do that, then we can’t win a referendum”, he said.

“In the United Kingdom, this is one of the key issues if not the key issue as far as the public is concerned”, said Stephen Booth, co-director of think-tank Open Europe.

“The Prime Minister knows this but because of the difficulties in his own party he still can’t bring himself to say it to the British people”. The question is whether we would be more successful in than out?