It is time for the British people to have their say

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron promised Britons a decisive referendum within five years on membership in the European Union — provided he wins the next election — in a long-awaited speech on Wednesday whose implications have alarmed the Obama administration and are likely to set the markers for an intense debate in Britain and across Europe. “It is time for the British people to have their say. It is time to settle this European question in British politics,” he told an audience in London, raising fears in capitals as distant as Washington that a ballot could lead to Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. He coupled his promise with an impassioned defense of continued membership in a more streamlined and competitive European Union, built around its core single market underpinning the body’s internal trade. “I know there will be those who say the vision I have outlined will be impossible to achieve. That there is no way our partners will cooperate. That the British people have set themselves on a path to inevitable exit. And that if we aren’t comfortable being in the E.U. after 40 years, we never will be,” he said. “But I refuse to take such a defeatist attitude — either for Britain or for Europe.” “And when the referendum comes,” he said, “I will campaign for it with all my heart and soul.” The speech was a defining moment in Mr. Cameron’s political career, reflecting a belief that by wresting some powers back from the European Union, he can win the support of a grudging British public that has long been ambivalent — or actively hostile — toward the idea of European integration. “We have the character of an island nation — independent, forthright, passionate in defense of our sovereignty,” he said. “We can no more change this sensibility than drain the English Channel.” Coming a day after the leaders of France and Germany met in Berlin to celebrate a half-century of sometimes uneasy partnership, Mr. Cameron’s plea for acknowledgment of British distinctions seemed to reflect some of the deepest political and philosophical differences between London and Continental Europe on integration. France, for instance, wants Britain to stay in the European Union, both as an ally in security terms and as a counterweight to Germany, but it is outspoken in its refusal to allow Britain to pick and choose its obligations. The French concern is shared by many others — that Britain could somehow undermine one of the great, if unfinished, accomplishments of the European Union: the single market in goods and services. “You cannot do Europe à la carte,” said Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius of France. “Imagine the E.U. was a soccer club: once you’ve joined up and you’re in this club, you can’t then say you want to play rugby.” Guido Westerwelle, the German foreign minister, echoed those sentiments, saying: “Germany wants the United Kingdom to remain an active and constructive part of the European Union. But cherry-picking is not an option.” The proposed referendum is depicted by some here as a gamble — if Britons chose to leave the union, they would be casting aside an engagement that has been a fundamental part of British policy for four decades. A British exit would also mean the departure of a major economic and banking power, placing new obstacles between British businesses and their main trading partners across the English Channel. “If we left the European Union,” Mr. Cameron warned, “it would be a one-way ticket.” Mr. Cameron had initially planned to deliver the address in the Netherlands last Friday but postponed it because of the hostage crisis in Algeria. He ruled out an immediate ballot, saying that the turmoil within the 17-nation zone that uses the euro currency, of which Britain is not a member, meant that the broader European Union was heading for sweeping reforms that his government wanted to influence. A referendum before those changes are made, he said, would present an “entirely false choice.” Mr. Cameron said he would seek a mandate at the 2015 election for a Conservative government to negotiate a new relationship with the European Union And when we have negotiated that new settlement, we will give the British people a referendum with a very simple in-or-out choice: to stay in the E.U. on these new terms, or come out altogether. It will be an in-out referendum,” he said. Mr. Cameron added that he would complete the negotiations and hold this referendum within the first half of his next term, if he won, suggesting that the vote would take place in 2017 or 2018. Speaking later during a rowdy parliamentary session, Mr. Cameron said the areas where he wanted to see change included “social legislation, employment legislation, environmental legislation where Europe has gone far too far.” Mr. Cameron had been under mounting pressure from his Conservative Party to announce the referendum. Apart from a longstanding aversion to closer European integration among many of them, Conservative lawmakers are also concerned about a potential electoral threat from insurgent euroskeptics in the U.K. Independence Party. Nigel Farage, the leader of the Independence Party, said Mr. Cameron’s speech had “defined the national debate about our place in the European Union. No longer can the case for British withdrawal be confined to the margins. The genie is out of the bottle.” The United States has been unusually public in its insistence that Britain, a close ally, stay in the union. Last week, a White House spokesman quoted President Obama as telling Mr. Cameron by telephone that “the United States values a strong U.K. in a strong European Union, which makes critical contributions to peace, prosperity and security in Europe and around the world.” In his speech, Mr. Cameron said, “There is no doubt that we are more powerful in Washington, in Beijing, in Delhi because we are a powerful player in the European Union.” The referendum announcement seemed likely to broaden the catalog of tensions between his Conservative Party, the more pro-European Liberal Democrats — the junior partner in Britain’s coalition government — and the Labour opposition. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said Mr. Cameron’s speech was “not in the national interest” because economic recovery would be “all the harder if we have years of grinding uncertainty because of an ill-defined, protracted renegotiation of Britain’s status within the European Union.” Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said that the referendum plan would create uncertainty among investors and was a “huge gamble” for the economy. He taunted Mr. Cameron, saying that he feared euroskeptics in his own party. But among grass-roots Conservatives, Mr. Cameron’s commitment to a referendum may be seen by his allies as enhancing the prospects for an outright victory in the 2015 election that would enable the Conservatives to rule without the Liberal Democrats in a second term. In his speech, Mr. Cameron said public disillusionment with the European Union was at an “all-time high” in Britain, and “democratic consent for the E.U. in Britain is now wafer-thin.” He said he wanted the European Union to be more flexible, acknowledge diversity among its member states, allow more power to be returned to its component nations and offer national parliaments a greater voice. “Countries are different,” he said. “They make different choices. We cannot harmonize everything.” Addressing foreign reporters in London, David Lidington, Britain’s minister for Europe, said an “overwhelming majority” of European Union nations wanted Britain to remain fully involved in the union. “I am encouraged by the measure of overlap that there is between a lot of what we are talking about and a lot of the things other countries say they want to achieve by way of reform,” Mr. Lidington said.