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KEN CLARKE provoked fury today after he claimed that Britain did not need a referendum on the EU.

The Justice Secretary claimed that there was little public demand for an in-out vote and insisted that voters were not as deeply eurosceptic as critics of Brussels suggest.

The Tory cabinet minister claimed that the MPs who have been calling for a referendum were 'a few extreme nationalist politicians.'

The comment provoked outrage among Tory backbenchers who have been increasing pressure on the Prime Minister to promise a referendum in a bid to escape the grips of Brussels.

Dozens have signed up to the People's Pledge campaign, which is staging votes around the country to gauge support - with the first showing 89.9 per cent in favour.

Ken Clarke has long been a Euro enthusiast, so his comments are, shall we say, hardly surprising and therefore unlikely to be 'provoking fury' amongst Conservative backbenchers as this report is seeking to suggest. As a well-known Eurosceptic myself, I have to say that Ken's comments are likely to have been rather more nuanced than this report suggests.

It is certainly true that due to the growing turbulence in the Eurozone currency area that there is increasing scepticism in the British public. However, given that Britain has been economically linked to the Eurozone for nearly 40 years, the suggestion that Britain could break that link overnight by leaving the EU is frankly fatuous. What is required is that all of the economic levers in a currency union need to concentrated in a single entity, be it the European Central Bank or something else. That 17 Finance Ministers can make 17 different sets of decisions within a single currency is ludicrous as we Eurosceptics have been saying for many years.