Interesting to note that there are still some commenting here who seem to think that abandoning a clearly sinking ship is a mistake and that being drowned as it goes down is in some strange way preferable because then we would be in company. Very strange really.

Sadly Sally your idea of a genuine Conservative differs from that of the great majority of the Party's members, activists and voters.

If you really think that then you are clearly living in some kind of alternate reality and not the real world with the rest of us. As a member of the CH club I'm sure that the majority viewpoint is that opinions such as yours should be banned and sent back to the Guardian's Comment is Free (provided they agree with it) pages where it belongs. In the light of your view about majority viewpoints I am sure that you will agree, or are you just another Europhile hypocrite?

Oh I DO hope that you are right! Goodbye to what is left of the parliamentary LimpDumbs then, oh Joy!!!

Perhaps Cameron has finally grown some cojones, at long last, and reminded the LibDems of their true position in this Dog's Breakfast of a Coalition. That would certainly be a good start to him redeeming himself and his, largely dreadful, coalition.

Andrew, it isn't April 1st so why this April Fool's joke of a post?

Being considered the best man for a job in which the only current competition is Milliband and Clegg really doesn't tell us much at all, it just makes Cameron the best of a bad lot.

David, what happened in Leicester is that the Labour Government's Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 required that all local authorities over a certain size choose to either have an Elected Mayor or the Strong Leader model of governance, which also concentrates all of the power in a single person's hands. In the event your Council chose, undoubtedly for party political reasons, to have an elected Mayor and so the only say that the electorate then has is in the election of that Mayor. The referendum opportunity only arises if the Council chooses an alternative model of governance and more than 5% of the electorate then sign a petition calling for a Mayoral referendum, as in Salford. I hope that helps.

Yup Boffy, you've got that right!

Let's ask the full monty Referendum question, with all options available. So; Would you rather see the UK as: 1) A fully engaged Federal Member of the EU including, in time, the Eurozone? 2) Becoming further integrated into the Fedralised EU but without joining the Euro? 3) Keeping things much as they are now? 4) A peripheral member of the EU, with a number of opt outs in different policy areas and no intention of ever joining the Euro? 5) A member of just the European Free Trade Area but not the EU itself? 6) Outside the EU and EFTA except as trading partners on the same basis as our other global trade partners?

JP, that is the best thing that I have read in a long time! An excellent and accurate analysis, and the absolute heart of the debate that must be had about the direction of this Government, the Conservative Party and, most of all, the nation.

If it is all Labour's fault then YOU are the person able to actually do something about that then Mr Cameron. What a shame that you do not have the courage or honesty to do so, you aren't fooling us any longer.

Maybe, it certainly won't be quisling Cameron though, that much is now plain.

If Cameron sacked IDS that would probably do it Anthony. No other betrayal, and there have been so many, seems to qualify though.

So an EU Referendum would destroy this dog's breakfast of a coalition and rid us of Cameron as well as sounding the death knell for our continued subjugation to the United States of Europe. Sounds like a three time win for conservatives to me. Trebles All Round!

Perhaps if our MPs could be seen to truly be holding the Government to account, perhaps if so many of them were not poodles willingly doing the Whips bidding on all occasions, then perhaps our MPs would have some grounds for this arrogant view that they are so much more important than the citizens in whose name all this is done and who are always expected to pay for it.

What should we cut next? It's obvious: 1) The outrageous and unjustifiable International Aid budget 2) HS2 3) All of Huhne's insane Green nonsense 4) The Health and Safety and Employment Rights industries 5) Any and all "Pilgrims" 6) The right of any newly arrived immigrant, EU or not, to receive social housing and welfare benefits 7) The expensive and pointless War on Drugs, which is unwinnable as has been proven worldwide 8) Senior Public Servant salaries 9) Politician's salaries 10) Our EU, UN and UNESCO contributions

As soon as British and US troops leave Afghanistan, as they will, then the lot of Women there will swiftly deteriorate back to the unacceptable place that it previously was. So the question really is, as others above have already asked, are we willing to shed yet more British blood to prevent that, and if so, then for how long?

It must be a nice place to be, your Eurofedarist alternative universe. Shame you don't live in the real world like the rest of us, a real world in which Cameron has repeatedly misled us all about Europe and is now planning to do so once again. All the hysteria in the world, and you Fedarists have certainly stirred up an awful lot of wholly unevidenced hysterical nonsense about the supposed horrors of the inevitable collapse of the Euro, does not change the facts, or the reality on the doorstep, which is that the British people have seen through the Europhile lies and very strongly now want, and are entitled to have, their say on it. The only reason that you Quisling Europhiles are so against any referendum on Europe is that you know that you will lose it since you lost the argument itself a long long time ago.

Totally right!

This is a bogus argument that, if tested, will turn out to be a warning of equivalent accuracy and hysteria to the Y2K computer meltdown non-event.

You are completely and utterly wrong about that one, it is the Europhile Fedarists that the public don't agree with by a large margin.

I agree with Adam, there ought to be a by election. However CH and we who post comments here need to display some basic consistency on this matter because right now it seems that any and all defections to the Tories are regarded as something wonderful, even when, as is often the case, they have been prompted solely by selfish reasons of personal advancement, and yet all defections away from the Tories are judged here to a completely different standard. That is hypocrisy plain and simple and does us all no credit whatsoever.

No, I don't agree. It is increasingly obvious that the Cameroons are using the LibDems as a smokescreen to do the failed, lefty, New Labourish things that they wanted to do anyway. I don't agree with the LibDems on just about anything but they are, in fact, a lot more radical than this coalition has been, what we get from this government is largely a continuation of Blairism and, now, Brownism too and that is the hallmark of the Cameron clique not the LibDems.

I think that I have been just as substantial today as George Osbrown has been ;-)