As the halfway point of 1966 approached, the Labour leadership still gave no indication of having decided if, when or how it would launch a fresh membership bid. The failure to adopt a more coherent strategy was not for want of ideas. In fact, the summer saw various discussions take place about a possible new application to the Six. On 23 June, for instance, Brown restated his desire to find a quick path to Brussels, this time suggesting that the government ‘outflank de Gaulle’ by teaming up with the Five. According to the Labour deputy leader, adopting a ‘truly European approach to security, defence and foreign policy arrangements’, including a possible new military pact centred around Britain and Germany and a loan to payment of Britain's creditors, could prove so successful that the French president would have no option other than to admit the British. To this ‘European’ solution centred on the Five appears to have been added a narrower ‘French’ one. Those who, like Callaghan, envisaged requesting French financial assistance to shore up sterling – which since the election had again slumped due in part to poor trade figures exacerbated further by the seamen's strike ongoing since 11 May – hoped that British humility would eventually win Paris round. But, as the visits to France and Germany over the summer both confirmed, neither of these steps seemed of a kind adequate to overcome either continued French hostility to enlargement or the host of other obstacles that had earlier been identified as preventing the Labour government from announcing a bid. Wilson therefore remained reluctant to push on with an application for the time being. The road to Brussels, it seemed, remained laden with considerable and potentially insurmountable hurdles.

Such discussions were soon overshadowed by yet more ominous economic news. So low had confidence in the pound sunk by mid-1966 that from the beginning of July Labour was forced to introduce a radical cost-cutting programme in the hope of stabilising the British economy, fending off a run on the pound and more generally bolstering support for the government. Perhaps most controversial among the host of deflationary measures introduced were the draconian restrictions on travel, a statutory wage cap and limits to hire purchase. Alongside these came stringent cuts to departmental expenditure amounting to 1.5 per cent of Britain's entire national income.