Bernard Ingham: Welcome to the EU, Mr Cameron, and watch out for trouble

I write with feeling. I briefed the media on behalf of Margaret Thatcher at 31 European summits between 1979 and 1990.

In those days, it was a tight little club compared to the bedlam of 27 different member-states these days. They still meet behind closed doors. Each head of state or government, plus the European Commission, delivers his own version of what is going on inside the conference hall through his spokesman and somehow the media make sense of it. It is a ludicrous way of legislating for 500 million people.

But that is not half of it. Our Eurosceptic Prime Minister will go into bat knowing half his side – and certainly his deputy, Nick Clegg – are raging Europhiles.

And, unless things have changed drastically, he will not be able to rely on the Foreign Office.

He will discover he has to watch every phrase in communiqus, written in impenetrable Brusselsese, and that it is impossible to get rid of every potentially damaging clause. Thatcher used to have us up at dawn brandishing the red pencil until there was very little left to strike out only to realise that you can't win everything and have to identify priorities.

These summits are anything but an exercise in the implementation of principles but a haggle over what the Franco-German axis wants. Their relations may be strained by Greek and Latin improvidence (rivalled only by that of the Scot, Gordon Brown), but they still arrogantly meet before each summit to carve up the agenda.

So welcome to the European Union, Mr Cameron. The European Commission will immediately test your mettle by insisting on their right to vet your June 22 Budget. They have decided you do not have a veto on this, whatever the European Communities Act 1972 might say.

If you are to retain respect at home and deserve it in Europe, you will have to tell them in no uncertain terms who's boss in Britain. It doesn't help that before you reach the wicket you have apparently conceded, even though we wisely stayed out of the euro, the Commission's right to vet national statistics after the discovery that fudged data was hiding an unholy mess in Athens.

The unelected European Commission is in the business of the relentless accumulation of power. Once anything is conceded it is theirs for keeps – and for using as a justification for acquiring still more.

In short, Cameron is entering a singularly treacherous minefield and nothing will please some of his so-called partners more – and especially the Commission – than to blow him up at the first opportunity.

It is vital for Britain and his Government that he emerges unscathed. It is not as if he were going naked into the chamber. If there is one thing the Continent fears, it is giving Britain an excuse to hold a referendum on any further transfer of power to Brussels – as would be involved in conceding supervision of national budgets.

He also has four months before the real crunch comes with the conclusion of the current negotiations on economic surveillance, though the reality

is that tomorrow they will be trying to soften him up for

the autumn.

If he is to prevail he will have to set out his stall in a considered way. He might say that he is all in favour of voluntary co-operation by European nations. The more the better. He is even more in favour of free trade and recognises that, if it is to be truly free, it has to be conducted within a framework of enforceable standards. That inevitably means submission to some supra-national set of rules.

But that must no longer be used as an excuse for establishing a European state in all bar name and for endless interference in the lives of the citizens of member-nations. In a terrorist world, he recognises the increased need for international co-operation, but Britain has not liked the way Europe has been developing for years and he is not in the business of going along with it.

That would be a useful way 40 years on from Mr Heath's Europe-or-bust performance of signalling that Britain has had enough of it and will no longer be party to its empire building.