Prime minister lays ground for referendum after EU negotiations in which UK would be lucky to secure cosmetic changes Share 6 inShare0 Email Harold Wilson held a referendum to confirm Britain's membership of the EEC in 1975 after securing cosmetic changes. Photograph: Imagno/Getty Images David Cameron will loathe the comparison. But he is lining up to become the new Harold Wilson of British politics. Labour's second longest serving prime minister famously papered over cracks in his cabinet by holding a referendum in 1975 to confirm Britain's membership of the EEC. The referendum is held up as an example of Wilson's central flaw – that he was a schemer whose main aim was to hold his feuding cabinets together. Cameron finds himself in a similar position. The prime minister laid the ground for a possible referendum on Britain's place in the EU when he wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that "the two words 'Europe' and 'referendum' can go tog