Prime Minister David Cameron faced the biggest rebellion of his premiership on Monday with dozens of his own party members in parliament set to back calls for a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union. The debate reignites a long-simmering row over Europe which tore apart the Conservatives in the 1990s and which Cameron had been desperate to defuse since he became party leader six years ago.Although the vote in parliament looks set to fail and carries no legal weight, it is seen as a test of the Conservative leader's authority and risks raising tensions within his pro-Europe Liberal Democrat coalition partners. It comes a day after French President Nicolas Sarkozy told Cameron at an EU summit he was “sick of you criticising us and telling us what to do”, widely quoted in British media. Some 78 members of parliament, many of them Conservatives, have put their names to a parliamentary motion calling for a referendum on whether Britain should leave the EU or renegotiate the terms of its membership. Parliament debates the issue later on Monday with a vote due shortly before 2100 GMT.Cameron has ordered Conservatives to vote against the motion but the party is dominated by eurosceptics, who believe Britain's sovereignty has been eroded by repeated transfers of power to Brussels.They see the debt crisis afflicting the euro zone as an opportunity to wrest back powers or even to leave the EU altogether.
