Risk of Marginalisation
If Cameron disengaged from Europe - for example, by refusing to implement the Lisbon treaty - the UK would be left marginalised internationally - much as it was before Edward Heath took the country into the European Economic Community in 1973.
The Obama administration has already expressed deep concern about Cameron's Euroscepticism - particularly after he decided to abandon the European People's Party in favour of a hodge-podge of Holocaust deniers and rightwingers from Poland and Latvia.
"It's a time of tumultuous waters all around us," cautions Pierre Lellouche.
"Wars, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, Afghanistan, global energy, Russia, immigration, economic crisis. It's time when the destiny of Europe is being defined."
"We need to be united, otherwise we'll be wiped out ... None of us can do it alone. Whether you're big or small, the lesson is the same. And England's risk is one of marginalisation. Irrelevance."
Representative democracy vs. direct democracy
Cameron may have also heard from his friend and mentor Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in California - the state is currently experiencing a severe economic crisis, which many people attribute to its penchant for referenda and direct democracy.
In 1978, for example, the California electorate voted for a 30% reduction in property taxes and set mandatory limits on future tax increases. Thirty years later, California has a $26.3 billion budget deficit; the state has issued more than $3 billion in IOUs; and its government bonds trade at near junk status.
California Chief Justice Ronald George says the 1978 referendum placed "California's lawmakers, and the state itself, in a fiscal straitjacket."
"Much of [California's] constitutional and statutory structure has been brought about not by legislative fact-gathering and deliberation, but rather by the approval of voter Initiative measures [i.e., referenda], often funded by special interests ..."
