The Prime Minister is said to be ready to hold up the option of Britain leaving Europe and will promise a referendum on the UK’s future relationship with the EU this week.
Mr Cameron had been due to set out his vision for renegotiating Britain’s place in Europe in a speech in Amsterdam on Friday but cancelled as the Algerian hostage crisis escalated.
He will deliver the speech within days in an effort to satisfy his own eurosceptic backbench MPs and win back public support that has been lost to the increasingly popular UK Independence Party in recent months.
Mr Cameron will detail his plan to use future EU Treaty changes to claw back powers from Brussels to Britain if the Conservatives win the next general election in 2015. His aim will be to ensure that the UK can remain inside the EU as a trading bloc, but with the scale bureaucracy, laws and regulation significantly reduced.
However, a referendum on the new terms of Britain’s membership to be held in 2017-18 is expected to include the “clear option” of the UK exiting the EU in the event of a “No” vote.
Mr Portillo, the former Conservative Defence Secretary, was regarded as one of the most eurosceptic figures in John Major’s Cabinet.
But he warned Mr Cameron against offering voters a chance to defy his wish for Britain to remain in Europe.
Mr Cameron’s position on an in-out referendum had move “a long way” in a short period of time, Mr Portillo said. The Prime Minister is now in the “very curious position” of offering a vote on Britain leaving Europe while insisting that he wants the UK to remain part of the union.
“To commit himself to an in-out referendum in the mid term of his next government seems to me to be extraordinarily dangerous,” Mr Portillo told the Murnaghan programme on Sky News. “People like to kick their government in the teeth.”
William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, insisted the government was acting in Britain’s “best interests”.
“The Prime Minister and I have said last year that we want to get a better relationship with the European Union,” Mr Hague told The Andrew Marr Show.
“There is a strong case for fresh consent in this country. The people of this country need their say.
“We want to succeed in the European Union; we want an outward-looking EU to succeed in the world, and for the United Kingdom to success in that. But we have to recognise that the European Union has changed a lot since the referendum of 1975 and that there have been not only great achievements to the EU’s name but some things that have gone badly wrong, such as the euro.”
Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip, told the programme that he would never agree to an electoral deal with the Conservatives while Mr Cameron remained Tory leader.
“It’s very interesting, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg, they don’t agree what Ukip stands for, but they recognise we have a sensible point of view that is held by a large number of people in this country,” he said.
“Mr Cameron, when he is asked about UKIP, throws abuse at as and calls us nutters and closet racists.
“I don’t think there is any prospect of us doing a deal with the Conservative Party while Mr Cameron is in charge.”
Some Tory backbenchers believe that a deal with Ukip could be their best chance of winning a Commons majority in future, with Mr Farage’s party in third place in recent election and poll results, ahead of the Lib