Cameron will put ‘heart and soul’ into staying in EU after sealing deal

The prime minister will hold a cabinet meeting at 10am on Saturday where he will recommend that the government formally endorses the deal, allowing him to announce a referendum on 23 June.

A red-eyed prime minister, who kept going during the talks with packets of Haribo sweets, said at a late-night press conference at the end of the summit in Brussels: “In an uncertain world is this really the time to add a huge new risk to our national and our economic security? I don’t believe that is right for Britain. I believe we are stronger, safer and better off inside a reformed EU and that is why I will be campaigning with all my heart and soul to persuade the British people to remain in the reformed EU that we have secured today.”

But in a major setback for the prime minister he was forced to admit that his close cabinet friend and ally, the justice secretary Michael Gove, will use the lifting of collective cabinet collective responsibility to campaign to leave the EU.

The prime minister sought to make light of Gove’s decision. “Michael is one of my oldest and closest friends but he has wanted to get Britain to pull out of the EU for about 30 years,” he said. “So of course I am disappointed that we are not going to be on the same side as we have this vital argument about our country’s future. I am disappointed but I am not surprised.”

Gove, a longstanding Eurosceptic, has been agonising for months about whether to follow his conscience or support his friends and allies, Cameron and George Osborne, in favour of EU membership.

The prime minister brushed off questions about whether Boris Johnson, who will now face pressure to follow Gove’s lead, will also campaign to leave. “Other politicians will have to make up their minds and they will have to make their own announcements. But in the end it is the British people that will decide.”

In a lengthy statement, which will form the basis of his main message in the referendum, the prime minister said that he had strengthened his key demands since the European council president, Donald Tusk, outlined his draft agreement on 2 February. The key changes will mean that:

• A proposed “emergency brake” on EU migrants claiming in-work benefits will last for seven years. It will cover individuals for no more than four years, but the UK will be allowed to apply the overall restrictions for seven years.

Cameron said: “You will not get full access to our welfare system for four years … No more something for nothing. People can come to our country but they will not get out of our welfare system until they have paid in. That is a very profound change.”

• Restrictions on child benefit for EU migrants will kick in at a reduced rate – indexed to the rate of a migrant’s home country – for new migrants with immediate effect. Existing EU migrants will be paid at the lower rate from 2020. Eastern European countries had hoped that existing migrants would be exempt.

• Britain has a specific opt-out from the EU’s historic commitment to forge an “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe”.

• One country – in effect Britain – will have the right to impose a handbrake to refer contentious financial regulation to a meeting of EU leaders in the European council.

The prime minister said: “When we set off down this track and I said we would renegotiate our membership from a standing start, people said you will never hold that renegotiation, you’ll never hold that referendum, you will never get people to agree to the things we want. But look at what we have agreed today.”

But the prime minister will now be thrown into the most perilous phase of his premiership even though he claims he has strengthened the draft deal for Britain, which was seen as underwhelming – even by some pro-Europeans.

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