LONDON: If history repeats itself, first as tragedy and second as farce — according to Karl Marx — then Lord Armstrong of Ilminster is a fine oracle to consult as David Cameron prepares to announce a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU.

As private secretary to Harold Wilson, Armstrong had a ringside seat when the late Labour prime minister renegotiated the terms of Britain’s membership of the EEC, which were put to voters in a referendum in 1975.

Armstrong, 85, believes Cameron will embark on a similar course when he pledges in the Netherlands tomorrow to renegotiate a repatriation of powers which would then be put to voters in a referendum. “I think it’s very alike,” he says.

Students of the 1970s have been dusting off history books to see whether there are parallels between Wilson and Cameron, who both saw a referendum as a way of dealing with party divisions over Europe.

Peter Kellner, the founder of the YouGov polling organisation, wrote this week of an “uncanny resemblance” between today and 1975, when support for pro-Europeans caught up and then overtook opponents once the issues started to be debated.

Armstrong declines to be drawn on whether Cameron, who says his ultimate goal is to remain in the EU on new terms, will prevail and win a yes vote.

He puts this down to a familiar uncertainty, this time over how the EU and the eurozone will develop over the next five years. “I don’t feel at all sure of the outcome any more than I did then,” he says. “Europe has come so much further since that time. I don’t know how much David Cameron is thinking about Wilson.”

Armstrong, the quintessential polished British government mandarin, saw Britain’s troubled relationship inside Downing Street from the moment the UK joined in 1973 until Margaret Thatcher started to turn against the EU in the late 1980s. He was private secretary to Ted Heath, a close friend, who took Britain into the EEC, and was cabinet secretary when Thatcher laid the ground for today’s single market in the mid-1980s.

Armstrong was one of the few people to witness one of the key moments which has parallels with today. He was at Chequers, the prime minister’s country residence, when Wilson took himself into his study for private reflection in December 1974 after the German chancellor Helmut Schmidt told the Labour party “some home truths in words of one syllable” over its plans to renegotiate its membership terms. “For over two hours, Harold sat in the study after Schmidt had gone,” Armstrong recalls. “He was entirely on his own. He made one telephone call to (foreign secretary) Jim Callaghan and then he called me in and he told me what he was going to do. I was obviously, having worked with Ted Heath, committed to Europe. And I can remember a sense of relief when he told me.”

Wilson decided to renegotiate more modest terms and to hold a referendum. “Harold didn’t get what he set out to get. But he got what he thought would be good enough to say he’d done all right.”

Nearly 40 years on and Cameron knows that his strategy lies in the hands of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who is well disposed to Britain. But, like Schmidt, who understood the need to help Britain but made clear there were limits, her patience is not finite.

As the man who will always be remembered for coining the phrase “economical with the truth”, Armstrong is discreet about Cameron. But he indicates that he does not feel he is quite in the mould of some of the prime ministers he knew as he cites Sir John Major, who secured Britain’s opt-out from the single currency.

“I think the stakes are very high and I think David Cameron is playing a very difficult game. It’s a game rather like Mr Wilson had. I think John Major was clever enough to get the outcome that he really wanted. I’m not sure if Cameron will.”

In his longest stint, Armstrong served as Thatcher’s cabinet secretary from 1979-87. Like Cameron and unlike Heath, Thatcher never felt an emotional attachment to the EU though she remained wholeheartedly committed to Britain’s membership, he says.

By arrangement with the Guardian