Most Britons dislike and mistrust the European Union. Polls have shown that somewhere between two thirds and three quarters of them are against Europe’s invasive constitution, the Lisbon Treaty.

David Cameron was always among them—or appeared to be. That is, until he was elected Britain’s prime minister three months ago.

Now he’s changing his tune and betraying his countrymen.

Look back five years. Cameron helped secure his election as leader of the Conservative Party in 2005 by accusing the center-right alliance of mainstream parties in the European Parliament of being too pro-federal Europe. He promised to pull Tory members out, and once elected he did so. He worked with other Euroskeptic parties to create a new group in the European Parliament, the European Conservatives and Reformists. He campaigned for the prime minister’s office on a pledge to try to reclaim from the EU his nation’s power over its social and employment policy, and regain some control over justice and home affairs.

European leaders scoffed, sneered and pouted. They warned that if Cameron won, Britain would end up isolated, left in the cold.

It appears their apprehensions were unfounded. Though the Tories did take a plurality of parliamentary seats, the margin was slim enough that Cameron had to cobble together an unlikely coalition with the Europe-loving Liberal Democrats. The path was paved for compromise.

The new prime minister immediately made significant concessions to his coalition partners by backing off some of his party’s most Euroskeptic policies. Among them, Cameron pulled back from the Conservative commitment to opt out of Europe’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, and considerably softened his pledge to repatriate control over social and employment legislation.

Although the new government did agree that Britain would not transfer any more authority to Brussels without holding a referendum, now it looks like it’s even finding ways around that promise.

In May, Mr. Cameron said he would not block a German attempt to alter the Lisbon Treaty to allow eurozone nations to place sanctions on club members that broke the group’s fiscal rules. He trumpeted his insistence that Britain not lose any of its power in the process: “We don’t want to see a transfer of power from Westminster to Brussels,” he said. “If there was a treaty that proposed that, obviously it would be subject to a referendum, but we don’t believe that is going to happen—is likely to happen.”

The fact is, though, that Cameron’s approval of Germany’s move already represents a weakening of his position. He has shifted from saying that he would not approve giving Brussels any more power, to now saying that he will not approve giving Brussels any more British power. And no referendum was held.

In June, Prime Minister Cameron attended his first European Council meeting. Up for discussion was the Commission’s plan to increase its oversight of EU member nations’ national budgets. Cameron returned home proud that he had “watered down” these proposals enough to preserve Britain’s financial sovereignty. Observers with more experience in the wily ways of European bureaucracy said this wasn’t the case. “[F]or all Cameron’s ‘watering down,’ the Commission version of the outcome of the meeting was undiluted: ‘We (the Commission) are speeding up the proposals we have set out,’” wrote former cabinet minister Norman Tebbit. “Or, as [French President Nicholas] Sarkozy put it: ‘This is only the beginning. Things are moving ahead.’”

“The British have now conceded the principle that other nations have a right to interfere in the United Kingdom’s budget procedures,” commented the Daily Mail’s Mary Ellen Synon. “Now Sarkozy and his allies wait for the next European Council in October. There will no doubt be another crisis going on then; if not, Sarkozy and Angela Merkel can declare Spain or Portugal or Greece or Ireland a crisis at the time. Then insist the solution is—as it always is—‘more Europe.’ Which means, more European control of national economies. That is when the real pressures on Cameron to get going with the EU economic government will start.”

One might charitably view that episode as a case of Mr. Cameron simply being in over his head. But last week, his government knowingly opted in on another onerous European directive, one that gives EU police forces considerable power over British police.

The European Investigation Order (eio) allows a court or prosecutor investigating a crime in one EU country to ask another EU country for information about a suspect. This means that British police can be forced to place British citizens under surveillance or hand over dna records; it means that foreign police can come to Britain in order to investigate a crime—even one that isn’t considered a crime in Britain.

That’s quite a transfer of power for the party headed by the man who said, “We don’t want to see a transfer of power from Westminster to Brussels.”

“The Euro-imperialists are not just on the march again, they are racing full tilt towards their next objectives of political, economic, fiscal and legal power centralized in Brussels, and the LibCon coalition seems to be unsure whether or not to resist them,” wrote Mr. Tebbit.

The Daily Mail’s Peter Hitchens, relating how more traditionalist Tories were pushed aside as they protested implementation of the eio, wrote that “They were powerless against this monstrous coalition of the Liberal Elite, which has seized their party in a sort of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.”

Britain’s new government seems to be quickly establishing a pattern of handing over power to Brussels while justifying it with slippery language. “Three months on, it looks increasingly as if none of their promises to safeguard British power is going to be kept,” wrote an upset Melanie Phillips. “Indeed, the coalition government even seems to be going in precisely the opposite direction. … Such a seamless progression from passionately opposing European integration to adopting the cynical euphemisms employed by the previous Labor government to conceal its encroachment makes one despair that the Tories will do anything at all to regain Britain’s powers to govern itself,” she lamented.

The Trumpet has said for years—as Herbert W. Armstrong said for decades before us—that the flirtation between Britain and the Continent was ill-conceived from the start and is destined to break up. The biblical prophecies that informed this forecast also reveal the catastrophic end of Britain’s dalliance with Europe. Read our article “When Britain Leaves Europe …” to get a better understanding of where this trend is leading. And for a more comprehensive study, read Mr. Armstrong’s masterwork The United States and Britain in Prophecy. We will gladly send you a free copy upon request.

Listening to David Cameron as he campaigned for office, it looked as though a Conservative victory could bring the differences dividing Britain and Europe to a head and hasten their split. As Brad Macdonald speculated when Cameron was elected,

In the time ahead expect Europe, especially Germany, to apply immense pressure on Britain and on the newly elected government of Conservative leader David Cameron. Britain will be pressured to fall in line with Berlin’s ongoing reconfiguration of Europe. More than likely, however, Britain will not slip happily into Germany’s posse of minion states. In fact, as the Trumpet has explained for years, expect Britain to either remove itself from the European Union, or to be actively cast out by Germany for not cooperating.

Europe’s “immense pressure” has certainly descended on Britain. But Cameron appears too weak to resist. What further loss of British sovereignty and weakening of British power might we witness in the time ahead, then, as the European empire steamrolls forward?

Still, the prophecy remains. A break is coming. How will it happen? Watch the situation closely. The more traditionalist segment of the Tory party is almost ready to revolt against Cameron for his concessions to Europe. Many Britons still hope their nation will scale back its relationship with the Continent. They need to understand, however, that while a split between these two powers is prophesied to occur, Britain’s future is inextricably bound to that of Europe in a manner truly horrifying to contemplate.