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senior Tory Eurosceptics, who declined to support the rebels because they did not want to vote in the same lobby as Balls, said they would have no qualms about rebelling if Cameron refused to change his position at the summit.The prime minister's negotiating position would allow the EU budget to rise in line with inflation, which would lead to a 2% increase. The EU budget will have to be approved by MPs."When a budget deal is put to the Commons I will vote against it if there is any increase in EU spending," one former Tory cabinet minister said.

Margaret Hodge, the Blairite former minister who chairs the Commons public accounts committee, was heard to describe the Labour vote as "hateful" as she prepared for a meeting of her committee. "I hate this vote. I do not want to do it. It's hateful," Hodge said. "I just think it's outrageous. I'm almost wanting to abstain."

One former Labour cabinet minister said: "The danger is that we are stroking a dangerous underbelly of Euroscepticism." Another former cabinet minister said: "I suppose I can just about stomach having to vote for this if this is about scoring a tactical hit on the government. But if this marks a strategic shift in our position on Europe, then I would be very worried."Labour said its position was consistent. Its MPs voted in favour of a real-terms cut in the budget in July.

The vote shows that the prime minister, who suffered a larger rebellion on a backbench motion on an EU referendum last year, is struggling to impose his authority on a sizeable chunk of his party.The warning from some Eurosceptics that they are keeping their powder dry until the substantial Commons vote to approve the eventual EU budget deal shows that he will have a tough hand to play at the summit.

The prime minister will tell Angela Merkel at a meeting next week that he faces intense parliamentary pressure to freeze the EU budget. But No 10 expects the German chancellor to say that she faces a more important challenge – saving the euro.

Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence party, said: "I am delighted that the house voted with the country rather than with the government whips. It is outrageous that the prime minister was prepared to go to Brussels in November and argue for what he would call a freeze and the rest of us would call an increase in the amount of money removed from British taxpayers to be spent by the distant EU bureaucrats."

The prime minister says that, if elected with a majority in 2015, he would hold a referendum by 2017. This would take place after a renegotiation of Britain's membership terms.

Hammond, interviewed for Pienaar's Politics on BBC radio, later said: "If the choice is between a European Union written exactly as it is today and not being a part of that then I have to say that I'm on the side of the argument that Michael Gove has put forward."

Theresa May, the home secretary, said she too would abstain. But she declined to say whether she would vote to leave the EU if a referendum were held now. The prime minister will be in the US when the Commons vote is held.

Boris Johnson backed Tory backbench demands for an EU referendum bill and warned Cameron he must make it clear Britain is "ready to walk away" unless its relationship is fundamentally reformed,

But the mayor of London also suggested that leaving the EU would expose the idea that most of Britain's problems are self-inflicted. "If we left the EU, we would end this sterile debate, and we would have to recognise that most of our problems are not caused by 'Bwussels', but by chronic British short-termism, inadequate management, sloth, low skills, a culture of easy gratification and underinvestment in both human and physical capital and infrastructure," Johnson wrote in his Daily Telegraph column."Why are we still, person for person, so much less productive than the Germans? That is now a question more than a century old, and the answer is nothing to do with the EU. In or out of the EU, we must have a clear vision of how we are going to be competitive in a global economy."

The prime minister's decision to highlight the benefits of EU membership is likely to be welcomed by Obama, whose advisers expressed concern in the runup to Cameron's EU speech in January, when he outlined his referendum plan.

The president first described Britain's EU membership as an "expression of its influence" around the world, but then offered measured praise for the prime minister's plan to renegotiate Britain's EU membership terms after the next election. He said: "You probably want to see if you can fix what is broken in a very important relationship before you break it off – that makes some sense to me."

Earlier Cameron – in danger of looking as weak as John Major at the height of the Maastricht crisis – took comfort from the broad endorsement of his European strategy by Barack Obama at a joint White House Press conference.

But Obama said he would wait to see if the negotiations succeeded before making a final judgment, and repeatedly stressed the need for the UK to be engaged.

The Guardian/ICM poll is remarkable because barring a single month in 2002, the Conservatives have not dropped below 28% since Tony Blair's long honeymoon in 1997-98. The Lib Dems have not fallen below today's 11% in the series since September of 1997, the immediate aftermath of Blair's first victory. Labour's 34% score is its lowest since the immediate aftermath of Gordon Brown's ejection from power, in July 2010.

The poll also shows that there is a clear "Farage factor" in the personal leadership ratings. Last month voters were split down the middle on his performance with 28% saying Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, was doing a good job, and 29% a bad job, giving a net negative score of –1. Today, the balance of opinion is running 40%:23% in his favour, a net positive of +17.

The data compares trust and mistrust in the EU at the end of last year with levels in 2007, before the financial crisis, to reveal a precipitate fall in support for the EU of the kind that is common in Britain but is much more rarely seen on the continent.

Five years ago, 56% of Germans "tended to trust" the EU, whereas 59% now "tend to mistrust". In France, mistrust has risen from 41% to 56%. In Italy, where public confidence in Europe has traditionally been higher than in the national political class, mistrust of the EU has almost doubled from 28% to 53%.Even in Poland, which enthusiastically joined the EU less than a decade ago and is the single biggest beneficiary from the transfers of tens of billions of euros from Brussels, support has plummeted from 68% to 48%, although it remains the sole country surveyed where more people trust than mistrust the union.In Britain, where Eurobarometer regularly finds majority Euroscepticism, the mistrust grew from 49% to 69%, the highest level with the exception of the extraordinary turnaround in Spain.

"Overall levels of political trust and satisfaction with democracy [declined] across much of Europe, but this varied markedly between countries. It was significant in Britain, Belgium, Denmark and Finland, particularly notable in France, Ireland, Slovenia and Spain, and reached truly alarming proportions in the case of Greece," it said.

Aart de Geus, head of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, a German thinktank, also warned that the drive to surrender more key national powers to Brussels would backfire. "Public support for the EU has been falling since 2007. So it is risky to go for federalism as it can cause a backlash and unleash greater populism."