Cameron needs to convince both the member states and the EU institutions before his own side

The renegotiation of the UK’s membership has left many baffled as to what exactly Prime Minister David Cameron’s strategy really was. As David Spence argues, Cameron has faced a large and diverse number of negotiating partners in both the EU and the UK. One way of understanding what he and the many other negotiating partners hoped to achieve is by using an approach British civil servants have long been taught about negotiations: to think of the ideal, realistic and fall-back positions for the negotiation abroad and to reflect on these same three positions in terms of each of the UK’s negotiation partners, including in the ‘nested games’ at home.