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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow, Rowena Mason and Kevin Rawlinson

Boris Johnson backs Brexit after 'agonisingly difficult' decision – as it happened

Boris backs Brexit – video

Boris Johnson declares for Out - and backlash soon follows

We’re going to close this live blog down now. The day’s major EU referendum news is that the mayor of London Boris Johnson has announced he will campaign for Britain to leave the 28-nation bloc.

While he has insisted he will not take a leading role, his declaration was billed as a major shot in the arm for the Leave campaign and as a play for the Tory leadership, should the prime minister be forced to resign in the event of a vote to leave.

Addressing reporters outside his home in an appearance my colleague Nicholas Watt said was “engineered to within an inch of its life, Johnson said he took the decision “after a huge amount of heartache”. He batted away claims it followed a similar amount of strategic planning.

Soon after, came the recriminations. The former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine called Johnson’s decision “illogical”, while a Remain camp source went further, calling it the “most nakedly self-serving piece of political positioning in years”.

Meanwhile, my colleague Nicholas Watt has written an analysis of what he says was a heavily choreographed announcement by Boris Johnson this afternoon.

A conventional politician with a major announcement to make at short notice would summon one television crew for a “sit down” interview which would then be “pooled” by all the broadcasters who would run it at an agreed time. That would never do for Johnson, who always likes to ensure an element of unpredictability about his interventions. His communications team set in motion the conditions for a media scrum shortly before 5pm after deciding that a traditional television interview, in which he would explain the thinking in his Daily Telegraph column on Monday, would not suffice. The scrum was meant to look spontaneous but was in fact engineered to within an inch of its life.

Boris Johnson’s father Stanley, who worked in the European Commission in the 1970s, tells Sky News he believes his son has come to the wrong conclusion on the European Union.

Stanley Johnson said he was proud of his son and respected his view but said his own position on the issue differs. And he called suggestions that Boris’ decision was a play for the Tory party leadership “odd”.

Fraser Nelson has written an interesting piece for the Telegraph, asking whether David Cameron will ever forgive his university friend Boris Johnson.

Already, there are signs of the Cameron operation closing ranks against Boris. No 10 has a semi-official vengeance policy: ministers with a long-standing opposition to the EU will be forgiven for backing “out”. The implication is that there will be no forgiveness for Boris, who has waited until now to declare his support for Brexit. “The last thing I wanted was to go against David Cameron,” said Boris yesterday. Quite true: what he wants is to come after him – and he is, as of last night, the bookmakers’ favourite to do just that.

Labour’s shadow Europe minister Pat Glass is also seeking to frame Boris Johnson’s decision as one that “says more about the Tory leadership contest and Boris’ own positioning than what is in the best interests of Britain”.

My colleague Caroline Davies was in the crowd of journalists, onlookers and animals who turned up to hear Boris Johnson announce his decision. She writes:

A dog on a lead, whose owner had joined the scrum, whimpered quietly, perhaps in expectation. Peering down on BoJo’s flaxen crown, his neighbours had taken up poll position hanging out of an upstairs window.

“Let me tell you where I’ve got to ... which is, um, I am, um ... I’ve made up my mind,” he pronounced, brightly.

There was a collective intake of breath. But, no. Johnson, who has kept his party waiting, and waiting, was not ready to relinquish quite yet.

You can read the full piece here.

And some are starting to suggest that Boris Johnson’s support for Brexit is already having a real world effect:

Boris Johnson mentioned the political might he felt would be ranged against him after his announcement this afternoon. And it seems it only took about an hour for the backlash to begin.

The Tory grandee Lord Heseltine has just issued a statement.

Given that Boris has spent so long agonising over this decision, his decision is illogical. If it takes you this long to make up your mind about something so fundamental and you still have questions, then surely the right option is to stay with what you know, rather than risk our economy and security with a leap in the dark.

If he were to be successful in his ambition to cut us off from Europe, the flags would fly in Frankfurt and Paris in his honour.

At a stroke, he would have blown away the safeguards for our financial services industry that the prime minister has just secured.

That is to risk countless jobs across our country from Edinburgh in the north to Bournemouth in the south and, of course, London itself.

And the noises from the Remain camp are even more menacing. A source said:

This is the most nakedly self-serving piece of political positioning in years.

Everybody in Westminster knows that Boris doesn’t really believe in Out. He’s putting his personal ambition before the national interest.

It says a lot about Boris’s priorities that his last act as Mayor of London is to betray this great city by turning his back on the needs of the City of London and the views of the majority of Londoners.

And Will Straw, the executive director of Britain Stronger In Europe, said:

Boris might be a big personality but he highlights the Out campaigns’ biggest weakness – they have no consistency or clarity on what leaving Europe means for Britain and how our economy can be protected from the outside.

He’s previously supported remaining in and has never been able to answer difficult questions on the economic implications of leaving. He’s going to have to now.

Straw also highlighted the questions the Remain camp felt Johnson must answer, now that he has decided to support Brexit.

Although, it is just possible that there is some spinning going on here:

It seems David Cameron may have been kept very much in the dark about Boris Johnson’s decision today:

One outcome of the last few days is that it goes some way towards settling the row over whether Vote Leave or the Grassroots Movement/Leave.EU will get the formal designation from the Electoral Commission as the official out campaign.

Vote Leave, run by Matthew Elliott, formerly of the Taxpayers’ Alliance and Dominic Cummings, an ex-adviser to Michael Gove, have signed up six cabinet ministers - IDS, Gove, John Whittingdale, Priti Patel, Theresa Villiers and Chris Grayling - as well as Boris Johnson.

The Grassroots Out campaign - headed by Nigel Farage, Kate Hoey and Peter Bone - has been criticised by some of its own side for unveiling George Galloway as its special guest at a rally on Friday.

The Leave.EU campaign, run by Ukip donor Arron Banks, has this to say about Boris choosing to back the leave camp:

We’d like to offer the Mayor of London a warm welcome to the Brexit campaign. We share his vision of a UK with full, democratic control of its affairs, and a relationship with Europe based on free trade and voluntary co-operation.

However, this referendum will be decided by the people, not politicians, and we hope the media will make sure their voice is heard as well.

Johnson was careful in his statement to bat away any suggestion that this was all about his desire to be the next Conservative leader and prime minister. But an immediate consequence of his decision is that he has overtaken George Osborne as the next favourite for that job.

Number 10 reacts to the Boris Johnson decision to campaign for Brexit

A No 10 spokesman reacted to Johnson’s statement without mentioning him by name:

Our message to everyone is we want Britain to have the best of both worlds: all the advantages of the jobs and investment that comes with being in the EU, without the downsides of being in the Euro and open borders.

On the other side, the Remainers have prepared some questions for Boris to answer about some of the pro-EU arguments he has made in the past.

  • Does Boris Johnson still agree “good things” have come from the single market and stick by his past support for the EU?
  • Does Boris Johnson stick by his past warnings that leaving “would cause at least some business uncertainty” and that the UK would “face some penalties”?
  • Boris Johnson has admitted that if Britain left the EU we would lose influence and “face some penalties”. Will he confirm that this would be the case?
  • Does Boris Johnson stick by his past belief that it “is in Britain’s geo-strategic interests to be pretty intimately engaged” with the European continent?
  • Will Boris Johnson admit that a “free trading arrangement” means leaving the valuable EU single market?
  • Boris Johnson has said if Britain leaves we would still have to have the same representation in Brussels. This isn’t true – we would lose our MEPs and representation in EU institutions. Will he now admit it?

The leave camp is naturally delighted by the BoGo decision. Although he claims not to want to lead the campaign, he will add some stardust and a highly persuasive manner of speaking to the Brexit cause.

Updated

It was a fairly brief and fumbling statement in which Johnson was not even sure of the name of the main leave campaign. But the main points are:

  • Johnson claims it was a difficult decision but he has had doubts about the EU’s powers getting “out of control” for 30 years
  • He wants David Cameron to stay as prime minister regardless of the result
  • Johnson does not want to take part in television debates against his Tory colleagues
  • He paid tribute to Cameron for having negotiated “fantastically well” but no one could call it fundamental reform.

Johnson says he “won’t do is take part in loads of blooming TV debates against other people from my party”, signalling he does not want to be the leader of the Leave campaign.

He also says that whatever happens at the end of the referendum, Cameron “has got to stay”.

The London mayor says he does not mind being portrayed as a “crazy crank but I happen to think I am right”.

Boris Johnson says will campaign for Brexit

Appearing on his doorstep, he says he loves European culture and civilisation but there should be no confusion with that and a political project that is “basically being going on for decades, which I think is in real danger of getting out of proper democratic control”.

He says it has long been his view and sovereignty is being very greatly eroded. The European Court of Justice projects down a single unified judicial law book with no recourse and comeback. That has been getting out of control, Johnson adds.

“I look at what the PM achieved. He did fantastically well. Everyone should pay tribute to what he pulled off but I don’t think anyone could realistically claim that this is fundamental reform. It is my view that after 30 years of writing about this. I have chance to actually do something. I would like to see a new relationship based on trade and cooperation...

That is why after a huge amount of heartache... I don’t think there is anything else I can do. I will be advocating Vote Leave because I want a better deal for the people of this country, to save them money and take back control.

Updated

It is not just Boris Johnson’s decision about which side to back that is important, but how he chooses to support it. It is possible that he could say he is voting for Brexit but does not want a major role in the campaign itself because the choice is so finely balanced. That would boost his leadership credentials with the Tory grassroots who want out but also do little harm to the chances of the UK staying in the EU - which some say is actually closer to his real position. On the other hand, Johnson doesn’t do staying out of the limelight very well.

Former children’s minister Tim Loughton has published a lengthy letter on why he has decided he will vote “regretfully not to remain, definitely to leave”. It comes in at 2,766 words: longer than Michael Gove’s 1,574 word essay on Brexit, but unable to beat the record-setting Tory MP Iain Stewart, whose treatise is 2,939 words of explanation. Maybe their mums will get to the end of them.

Either Leave.EU, one of the rival Brexit camps, has done some speedy photoshopping or this is one they made earlier.

James Kirkup of the Telegraph has written an illuminating piece about the lifelong rivalry between Cameron and Johnson. The whole piece is well worth reading, but here is a good anecdote from it:

The best way to understand Boris and Dave is a story they both tell in private. It’s about a meeting in No 10 on some minor aspect of the London budget. Dave wants to minimise his spending; Boris to get the most cash he can.

“Who’s winning between Dave and Boris today? The man with the big job or the man with the first-name popularity?”

The PM has a briefing paper that reveals the most he’s prepared to give Boris. Boris wants to see it. The PM refuses. Boris tries to grab it. The PM snatches it away.

The Prime Minister and the Mayor of London end up wrestling on the floor trying to seize the paper.

And the vital detail is that each man tells the story that he got the paper. Even in a slightly juvenile squabble, they both want people to know that they won over the other.

David Cameron and Boris Johnson take part in a hand painting session during the general election campaign.
David Cameron and Boris Johnson take part in a hand painting session during the general election campaign. Photograph: Toby Melville/AP

It’s jumping the gun a little, but Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, has commented on Johnson’s likely to decision to back Brexit.

This is a deeply cynical move from a deeply ambitious politician who is using an in-out referendum as a back door to Number 10. It is a selfish move to put personal ambition before the jobs, security and prosperity of every Londoner.

Johnson has been doing all he can to maximise the drama around his announcement, despite his sister’s protestations that he would never stoop to “milking” such an important choice. Some are still underwhelmed by the tension though.

Less than an hour to go!

Boris John will reveal his decision in 48 minutes, for anyone who is counting. Broadcasters say he will be making a statement live on television at 5pm.

How important is Boris Johnson’s decision for the outcome of the EU referendum?

Some believe it could actually swing the referendum result. Around a third of voters in an Ipsos Mori poll said Johnson’s position could influence how they vote. That is less than the 44% who said they would take David Cameron’s views into account but far more than any of the other prominent out campaigners.

The key point about Johnson is that he has positive approval ratings, in contrast to the unpopular Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith, or the divisive Nigel Farage. There are very few other outters who are household names.

His decision to back the Brexiteers goes a long way to putting them back in contention, after an early campaign dogged by chaotic infighting and a failure to secure any of the most senior cabinet ministers for their side.

A media scrum has descended on Johnson’s house - reminiscent of the days of Borismania in 2012 when journalists were desperate to get him to say he wanted to be Tory leader.

A Vote Leave campaigner has helpfully left him a branded hat and umbrella as well.

While we’re waiting for the official reveal from Boris, here are some quotes from the man himself on the subject of the EU. They suggest that Johnson, a former Brussels reporter for the Telegraph, really is conflicted about the merits of the organisation:

23 January 2013
What most sensible people want is to belong to the single market but to lop off the irritating excrescences of the European Union. We now have a chance to get a great new deal for Britain - that will put the UK at the heart of European trade but that will also allow us to think globally... If it is put to us in a referendum, I have no doubt that the British people would vote for it.


28 November 2013
First they make us pay in our taxes for Greek olive groves, many of which probably don’t exist. Then they say we can’t dip our bread in olive oil in restaurants. We didn’t join the Common Market – betraying the New Zealanders and their butter – in order to be told when, where and how we must eat the olive oil we have been forced to subsidise. Talk about giving us the pip, folks.


4 August 2014
When you look at the cost of EU social policy, the stagnation of the EU economies, the continuing absurdities of some Brussels regulation, we are plainly getting to the stage where it might well be better to quit an unreformed EU than to stay in.


11 February 2015
I think that a Brexit, or a British exit, is very unlikely, provided we get a renegotiation which is satisfactory. I think we will.


7 February, 2016
So there is the dilemma in a nutshell: Britain in the EU good, in so far as that means helping to shape the destiny of a troubled continent in uncertain times, while trading freely with our partners. Britain in the EU bad, in so far as it is a political project whose destiny of ever-closer union we don’t accept and whose lust to regulate we can’t stop. That is why for the last couple of years I have argued that we would be – on the whole – better off in a reformed EU, but that Britain could have a great future outside.

Updated

Steve Baker, leader of the Conservatives for Britain group campaigning for Brexit, has just said it is “great to have Boris on the team”.

All the indications are that the London mayor has joined the leave campaigners, but he is yet to pop up on the airwaves himself to confirm this. We are expecting interviews with him to be broadcast within hours.

This is Rowena Mason, taking over the liveblog.

Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC political editor, has tweeted that Boris Johnson is definitely going to campaign for leave. This is what ITV’s Robert Peston reported last night, and Tim Shipman, the Sunday Times political editor, confirmed this morning.

Updated

Afternoon Summary

  • Duncan Smith has suggested that Cameron’s crackdown on child benefit going to the children of EU migrants living abroad could cost money, rather than save money. (See 3pm.)

That’s all from me. Thanks for the comments.

Updated

Iain Duncan Smith has given at least two interviews to the BBC today. In a TV interview he made his comment suggesting that staying in the EU could increase the terrorist threat to the UK. (See 2.20pm.) But he was also on the World this Weekend, and there were some good lines in that too.

  • Duncan Smith suggested that Cameron’s crackdown on child benefit going to EU children living abroad could cost money rather than save money. He said it would be complicated to administer, because child benefit going to EU children living abroad would have to be indexed according to local benefit rates. He said there may even have to be “some kind of exchange rate mechanism to figure out what [the rate] is on a weekly or daily basis”. Asked if the new system would prove more expensive than the current system, he replied:

I’m not able to say whether it is or not. I’ve only seen it in the last 24, 48 hours. The department is already looking at it.

When Mark Mardell put it to him again that the new system could prove expensive to administer, Duncan Smith replied:

You could make that assumption. I’m going to, if you don’t mind, say I don’t know the answer to that question, genuinely don’t know, because we’re not able to make that calculation because the details are not complete yet.

There is a touch of Francis Urquhart in that quote.

  • Duncan Smith criticised Alan Johnson for what he said about the six cabinet ministers who are voting to leave the EU. (See 2.13pm.)

I’m surprised at Alan being disparaging about anybody. I never thought politicians were all-stars anyway. No politician is a celebrity. If politicians begin to believe they are celebrities then they really need to go and sit down in a darkened room ... I say to Alan very simply that he degrades himself by saying things like that.

  • He said he did not accept leaving the EU would be “a leap in the dark”, as David Cameron claims. He says it could be more of a risk to remain in the EU.
  • He urged Boris Johnson not to make any decision about the EU based on personal ambition.

I say to Boris and to anybody else for that matter who is thinking about this: your country elected you to govern for them. Not any other thought in your head about other loyalties. It is our country that matters.

Ian Richardson playing Francis Urquhart in TV’s House Of Cards
Ian Richardson playing Francis Urquhart in TV’s House Of Cards Photograph: PA

The Conservative pro-European Nicholas Soames is on form on Twitter today. Now is is accusing Nigel Farage of wallowing in “the pornography of pessimism”.

Here is the the full quote from Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, where he said staying in the EU could make the UK more vulnerable to terrorist attack.

There is another concern and risk: the migration issue, in meltdown around the EU, with the EU almost incapable, it seems, of handling this massive wave of migration coming in from, not just by the way Syria. We hear today about Pakistanis and others coming in to Hungary and having a problem. You see various people from different parts of Iran are coming in. It’s not just from one country.

What we see with the EU is its incapacity to get its act together. That leads to tensions. Who’s to say in the next few years countries that have taken people from various areas aren’t then going to give them leave to remain and even passports as we’ve seen in some cases and then in due course may well turn up again in the UK.

These are big issues further down the road for us. This open border does not allow us to check and control people who may come and spend time [here]. We see what happened in Paris where they spent ages planning and plotting. Who is to say it is not beyond the wit of man that those might be already thinking about that ...

I think the present status of the open border we have right now, many of us feel does actually leave the door open and we need to see that resolved.

Alan Johnson's World this Weekend interview - Summary

Alan Johnson, the former cabinet minister and chair of the Labour In For Britain campaign, gave a lengthy interview to the World this Weekend a few minutes ago.

I’ve probably listened to around a dozen political interviews today. If you judge politicians by their ability to answer questions in a manner that is clear, fresh and interesting, this was probably the best.

Here are the key points.

  • Johnson accused his namesake Boris Johnson of “over-playing his hand”. He also said there was no record of the London mayor ever backing Brexit in the past. But he acknowledged that he would like to have Johnson on his side.

I would much rather Boris was on the In camp than the Out camp. His father, Stanley, is the co-chair of environmentalists for Europe. His brother, Jo, is the science minister [who] wrote a splendid article in the Times a couple of weeks ago saying how for science and research and development the European Union is.

In all Boris’s billions of words that he’s written over the years no one can find any reference to him being a leave the EU person. I would worry for Boris, for those fans of Boris, that he’s actually over-playing his hand here. I’ve got much more respect for Michael Gove who’s - though I disagree with his position - come out with it straight away. He’s not playing this media game.

This is about far more than the future of Boris Johnson. This is about the future of our country and our continent. And in that sense Boris is a sideshow here as well.

I have long had concerns about our membership of the EU but the experience of Government has only deepened my conviction that we need change. Every single day, every single minister is told: ‘Yes Minister, I understand, but I’m afraid that’s against EU rules’. I know it. My colleagues in government know it. And the British people ought to know it too: your government is not, ultimately, in control in hundreds of areas that matter.

And Johnson said in response.

That’s Michael Gove dealing in artistic licence. I was a minister for 11 years. I was secretary of state in five cabinet positions. This is a totally distorted view of ministerial life and Europe. I was trade and industry minister. Occasionally you come across the issue of state aid rules. Who was instrumental in drawing up those state aid rules? Britain. Why did we do it? Because we recognise that in this massive free trade area, half a billion people, a bigger commercial market than the US and China, we had to protect British industry. I struggle to think of a day when someone said to me you can’t do that minister because of European Union rules.

  • He dismissed the six ministers attending cabinet who have come out in favour of leaving the EU as relative lightweights.

I would not say that the six cabinet members I saw yesterday could be described as the political all-stars ... Let’s be kind, they are not the six most astute politicians that I have ever met in the cabinet.

Here are the six.

The six cabinet ministers campaigning for Brexit: (from left) John Whittingdale, Theresa Villiers, Michael Gove, Chris Grayling, Iain Duncan Smith and Priti Patel
The six cabinet ministers campaigning for Brexit: (from left) John Whittingdale, Theresa Villiers, Michael Gove, Chris Grayling, Iain Duncan Smith and Priti Patel Photograph: POOL/Reuters
  • Johnson said it was “unpatriotic” to argue that Europe was always something done to Britain.

I reject this argument Europe is always something that is done to us. Britain is the seven stone weakling on the beach having sand kicked in its face by the beach bully. This is a terrible, unpatriotic and I think inaccurate portrayal of [our country.]

  • He said sovereignty should not be confused with power. This is the same argument David Cameron was making in his Andrew Marr interview. (See 10.48am.) Johnson said:

Sovereignty should not be confused with power and influence. You can have sovereignty in a country that is declining, which is impoverished, where there is no worker protection, where there is no protection for the environment, no protection for the consumer, but you’ve got your sovereignty. Influence is ceding some of that sovereignty into something wider and then your country having an influence on 27 other member states in the European Union and, through them, across the world.

  • He said there was a “noble concept” at the heart of the European Union. It had prevented a repeat of the second world war, and encouraged Eastern European countries to convert to democracy, he said.
Alan Johnson
Alan Johnson Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Updated

Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, told Dermot Murnaghan on Sky earlier that he expected Boris Johnson to come out in favour of leaving the EU, and that this was significant because of Johnson’s potency as a campaigner. Farage said:

What again I think a lot of the commentariat in Westminster don’t understand is there are literally only five or six people in this referendum whose campaigning, whose presence, can sway the undecideds, and he is one of those half a dozen.

Nigel Farage on the Andrew Marr Show this morning.
Nigel Farage on the Andrew Marr Show this morning. Photograph: Jeff Overs/BBC/PA

Here are some tweets from journalists about Boris Johnson.

From the Telegraph’s James Kirkup

From the Times’s Philip Collins

From the Times’s Hugo Rifkind

From the Independent on Sunday’s John Rentoul

From the Scottish Daily Mail’s Chris Deerin

Pawel Swidlicki, an analyist at the Open Europe thinktank, says Iain Duncan Smith’s claim about being in the EU making Britain more vulnerable to terrorist attack suggests he favours a much tougher visa regime.

The Sunday Times’s Tim Shipman says Boris Johnson will back leaving the EU.

Here is the full quote from Chris Grayling, the leader of the Commons, on the Sunday Politics saying that David Cameron should stay on as prime minister even if Britain votes to leave the EU. Grayling said:

If the country decides to leave, then [Cameron] will lead us out. If the country decides to stay, he will lead us in government on to 2020 and carrying on the programme that will make a difference to the country ...

I think the last thing we need at the end of all this, whether we vote to leave or whether we vote to stay, is a political bloodbath. You know, we’ve got a good team, that team needs to carry on and do what the country asks us to do.

Chris Grayling
Chris Grayling Photograph: Jeff Overs/BBC/PA

Boris Johnson is due to announce his decision in his column in tomorrow’s Daily Telegraph, which the Telegraph says it will publish at 10pm.

Such is the importance they are attaching to this historic declaration they have set up a countdown clock.

Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leaders, is also challenging Boris Johnson to come out in favour of staying in the EU. Farron said:

Boris has had more positions on Europe than the Karma Sutra. It reflects years of bitter infighting within the Tory party that even the mayor of London won’t campaign to stay in Europe. He should get a backbone and support British business and the city by campaigning to stay in Europe.

More from Nicholas Soames on Boris Johnson.

Boris Johnson has made up his mind, according to ITV’s Carl Dinnen.

Only he’s not telling us yet.

Priti Patel, the employment minister and one of the six ministers attending cabinet who is voting to leave the EU, told Pienaar’s Politics on Radio 5 Live earlier that she did not believe that David Cameron’s proposed sovereignty bill would have much effect. She told the programme:

We’ve had the sovereignty bill previously. We’ve had the guarantees theoretically that should we get treaty change we’ll get other referendums. The point is, by remaining in we are still exposed by those risks of the European court and European institutions dictating to us and still doing business under the same terms and conditions. That means key decisions being caught up in the courts, key decisions that we want to make being ridden over roughshod.

Like fellow Outer Chris Grayling (see 11.35am), she also said she would want Cameron to remain as prime minister even if Britain voted to leave.

She also played down speculation about her becoming the next Conservative leader.

Asked about this, she replied:

What will be, will be. Ultimately, for me, it is a privilege to serve in a Conservative government. I’m focused on the now, and not thinking about the future at all.

Priti Patel
Priti Patel Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s political editor, has more on the Iain Duncan Smith interview.

Iain Duncan Smith says staying in EU could make Britain more vulnerable to terrorist attacks

Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary who is campaigning to leave the EU, has told the BBC that staying in would make Britain more vulnerable to a terrorist attack.

I’ll post the quotes when I get them.

Iain Duncan Smith
Iain Duncan Smith Photograph: Mark Thomas/REX/Shutterstock

Nicholas Soames, the Conservative MP (who is fast becoming a Twitter personality) says that Boris Johnson is not an “Outer”.

Soames is implying that if Johnson does come out in favour of leaving the EU, he won’t be being sincere.

Updated

In his interview with Dermot Murnaghan on Sky, Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary, also said that he would not be sharing a platform with any Conservatives during the referendum campaign.

I said right at the beginning that I’m not going to be sharing any platforms with any Conservatives during this referendum campaign. That’s why we set up our Labour campaign, headed by Alan Johnson, because we want to talk to Labour supporters and persuade them this is the right thing to do in the interests of the country and themselves, their families, their jobs, their incomes that depend on being part of this single market.

In his Marr interview David Cameron said that Boris Johnson would be linking arms with Nigel Farage and George Galloway if he backed leaving the EU.

Liam Fox, the Conservative former defence secretary who is backing Out, had a response to this charge when he was interviewed on Sky’s Murnaghan programme earlier. He said:

People say how could you be in the same campaign as George Galloway and others. But the prime minister is going to have to link arms with Nicola Sturgeon and Jeremy Corbyn on that side of the argument, not a pretty picture I have to say.

Fox also said he would be “surprised” if Johnson decided now to vote to stay in the EU. And he said that a lot of friendships in the Conservative party would be tested over the next four months.

Chris Grayling, the leader of the Commons who is campaigning for Britain to leave the EU, has just told the BBC’s Sunday Politics that if Britain votes for Brexit, David Cameron should remain as prime minister.

Earlier I quoted from Michael Gove’s statement about why he was in favour of leaving the EU, and his claim that EU rules dictate “the distance houses have to be from heathland to prevent cats chasing birds (five kilometres)“. (See 9.37am.)

In the comments David Graham, a barrister specialising in planning and environmental law, says Gove is wrong about this. Here is an extract from his lengthy post.

The EU cannot make any laws on town and country planning at all without unanimity (including UK agreement) in the Council, under article 192(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU. It is not an arena in which we can be “dictated to” by foreign politicians, and Mr Gove is mistaken to believe otherwise.

UK regulations made pursuant to the EU Birds Directive (originally enacted in 1979, which you can read in its latest amended and consolidated form here) aim to protect endangered bird species and habitats, but do not prescribe any rules about cats or housing or distance from development.

The Directive and UK domestic regulations give effect to obligations assumed independently by the UK under international treaties outside the EU framework (the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of 1971 and the Bern Convention on Wildlife of 1979).

Gerard Lyons, economic adviser to Boris Johnson in his capacity of mayor of London, has been tweeting about Brexit today. He says leaving the EU would not be disastrous for the City.

UPDATE: Lyons set out his arguments about why the City could prosper outside the EU in more detail in this article in 2014.

Updated

Like Alastair Campbell, the journalist and commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown found to her surprise that she was full of praise for David Cameron this morning.

With so much of today’s attention on the internal deliberations of one man, Boris Johnson, it is worth looking at this Ipsos Mori blogpost in order to understand why news editors across the country are trying to get the inside track on Johnson’s thinking.

The results of a poll published on Wednesday show that Johnson comes a clear second to David Cameron among politicians whose decision is likely to influence which way people vote in the EU referendum.

Ipsos-Mori polling data

Cameron’s leadership of the In campaign is an important factor for 44% of respondents, while 32% are awaiting Johnson’s decision. Potential Tory leadership rivals Theresa May and George Osborne are both on 28%, while the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s opinion matters to 27% of those polled.

Gideon Skinner, head of political research at Ipsos Mori, said:

Although other figures are higher among individual groups, Boris Johnson has a broad range of appeal – both to in and out supporters, Conservatives and non-Conservatives, and whether people have already decided or may change their minds.

Updated

Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary, told Sky’s Murnaghan programme that if Boris Johnson does decide to back the Out camp, the decision could backfire on him. Benn said:

I’m surprised really because Boris Johnson in the past has written a lot about the importance of staying in the European Union and if he is actually thinking about putting his personal leadership ambitions above the national interest I don’t think it’s going to do him any good.

Rachel Johnson.
Rachel Johnson.

Further confirmation from Boris Johnson’s sister Rachel on the timing of the London mayor’s long-awaited announcement. Rachel Johnson told Sky News she had spoken to her brother and his verdict on the EU would be revealed in his Telegraph column to be tweeted out at 10pm on Sunday night.

Rachel denied Boris was “milking it” to create maximum publicity, saying it was an “enormously complicated” decision to make since Cameron’s deal was done late on Friday.

Cameron's Marr interview - Summary and analysis

David Cameron is often dismissed as little more than a polished PR executive, but there is a lot to be said for accomplished communications skills in politics and this morning, after his Andrew Marr interview, Cameron received a rare compliment from someone who understands this as well as anyone.

It wasn’t brilliant, and in itself a single interview does not really change anything, but what was impressive was Cameron’s ability to focus relentless on the key messages that he will use to try to persuade those who are undecided to back Britain remaining in the EU. We heard them late on Friday night, after the EU summit ended, we heard them again in his statement outside Number 10 yesterday and we will hear them ad nauseam over the next four months: Britain will be stronger, safer and better off in the EU, he said. It’s not Churchill or Cicero, but it is an argument that people can grasp.

And Cameron did not just sloganise. He also faced head-on the argument about sovereignty, and put the case that having power and influence depends on being able to pool sovereignty about as clearly as it ever gets put.

Here are the main points he made.

  • Cameron said that leaving the EU would give Britain “the illusion of sovereignty”, but not real power over its destiny. In a direct attempt to take on the sovereignty argument at the heart of Michael Gove’s statement yesterday explaining why he would be voting to leave the EU, Cameron said that outside the EU “you might feel more sovereign, but you’re less in charge of your own destiny”. That was because Britain would not have influence over the EU rules it would have to accept if it wanted access to the single market, he said

If Britain were to leave the EU that might give you a feeling of sovereignty but you have got to ask yourself ‘is it real?’ Would you have the power to help businesses and make sure they weren’t discriminated against in Europe? No you wouldn’t.

Would you have the power to insist that European countries share with us their border information so we know what terrorists and criminals are doing in Europe? No you wouldn’t.

If suddenly a ban was put on for some bogus health reasons on one of our industries, would you be able to insist that that ban was unpicked? No you wouldn’t. You have an illusion of sovereignty but you don’t have power, you don’t have control, you can’t get things done.

  • He said that if Boris Johnson decided to campaign to leave the EU, he would be “linking arms with Nigel Farage and George Galloway”.

I would say to Boris what I say to everybody else, which is that we will be safer, we will be stronger, we will be better off inside the EU. I think the prospect of linking arms with Nigel Farage and George Galloway and taking a leap into the dark is the wrong step for our country.

If Boris and if others really care about being able to get things done in our world, then the EU is one of the ways in which we get them done.

  • Cameron rejected claims that the pro-EU camp was establishment-dominated. He said you could not get more establishment than the lord chancellor (Michael Gove) and the leader of the Commons (Chris Grayling).
  • Cameron confirmed that the details of how the emergency brake works, in terms of how quickly EU migrants can start claiming a proportion of benefits during the four years while they wait for full in-work benefits, have yet to be agreed.
  • He said that some EU migrants might not get full in-work benefits until 2028 as a result of what he had agreed. That was because the plans could come into force next year, he said. The emergency brake would apply for seven years, lasting until 2024, and anyone starting work that year would have to wait a further four years until they got full in-work benefits, he said.
  • He said he would remain as prime minister if the UK voted to leave the EU and focus on implementing the wishes of the people.
  • He refused to admit that he had failed to achieve precisely what he proposed in the Conservative manifesto on child benefit. The manifesto said proposed stopping any child benefit being paid for EU children living abroad, but instead payments will continue to be paid at home-country rates, not UK rates. Asked to admit that he had not got what he wanted, Cameron just said people could see what was in the manifesto and see what he had achieved. Huffington Post’s Paul Waugh thinks his failure to be more open may have been a mistake.
  • He declined to spell out details of his plan for a sovereignty law, to assert the sovereignty of parliament. This is something Boris Johnson has been demanding, and Cameron was expected to say more about this this morning. The Spectator journalist Toby Young thinks Cameron’s reticence suggests Cameron is resigned to Johnson backing the Out camp.
  • Cameron said he would not be backing a written constitution as part of his sovereignty law plans.

Updated

This picture of George Galloway and Nigel Farage together at a Grassroots Out campaign on Friday night is already making hay for the In campaign.
This picture of George Galloway and Nigel Farage together at a Grassroots Out campaign on Friday night is already making hay for the In campaign. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Reuters

Twitter's reaction to Cameron's Marr interview

The feeling among political commentators on Twitter is that Marr’s grill only really warmed up in the final third, with the PM’s warning to Boris Johnson not to “link arms” with Nigel Farage and George Galloway being interpreted as a veiled reference to the chances of a future cabinet position for the London mayor.

From the Sunday Times’ Tim Shipman:

From BuzzFeed’s Jim Waterson:

Sky’s Faisal Islam picked up on the PM’s neat line torpedoing any characterisation of the Out campaign being a “rebel alliance” – after all, who could be more establishment than the lord chancellor (Gove) and the leader of the Commons (Grayling).

Paul Waugh of the Huffington Post is worried for the content of Boris’s Telegraph column, given Cameron didn’t announce further detail of his sovereignty plan for Britain on Marr, as was expected.

From Matt Chorley of the Times:

While Alastair Campbell laments the complete absence of Labour from the key EU argument so far.

Updated

Q: If Britain votes to leave the EU, that would be catastrophic for you, wouldn’t it?

Cameron says he promised a referendum. The renegotiation is complete, and now the referendum will take place.

The people are sovereign, he says.

They will instruct the prime minister either to stay or to leave. He will follow their instructions.

Q: Are you losing the campaign? Michael Gove is backing Out, and Boris Johnson might too.

Cameron says he does not accept that.

He says some claims this is about the establishment versus the people. But you cannot get more establishment than the leader of the Commons (Chris Grayling) and the lord chancellor (Gove), he says.

And that’s it. The interview is over.

I will post a summary shortly.

Cameron says the EU is not perfect. It has got better, but there is a lot more to do.

If the UK leaves the EU, it will probably get worse, he says.

That would be bad for the UK, he says.

Cameron says the cabinet meeting yesterday was “very dignified”.

(Here is James Forsyth’s Coffee House blog about what was said there.)

Cameron says this debate is about the national interest. Britain can succeed whatever it does. But, having been prime minister for six years, he is absolutely clear that Britain would be better off staying in the EU.

He says if Britain does vote to leave the EU, he will try to make it work.

Q: The Conservative party is deeply split, isn’t it?

Cameron says at the cabinet meeting yesterday all 29 people around the table agreed he had got a good deal.

And 23 out of 29 people said they would back staying in the EU.

He says he would say to Boris Johnson what he says to everyone: Britain will be safer, stronger and better off in the EU. Linking arms with Nigel Farage and George Galloway and taking a leap in the dark would be a mistake, he says.

Cameron says he will publish plans for a law to show that British law is sovereign.

Q: You cannot exempt Britain from EU treaties. This is just PR, isn’t it?

Cameron says it is important for people to know that what parliament does, it can undo.

He says he does not love Brussels.

He wants Britain to have the best of both worlds.

He says countries with written constitutions have been able to assert the sovereignty of their constitutions.

Marr presses him for details. Cameron says he will have to wait.

Q: Are you proposing a written constitution?

No, says Cameron.

Cameron says you might feel more sovereign outside the EU.

But if you cannot ensure businesses get access to the single market, or get passenger information that might be necessary for security, you will not be better off, he says.

Cameron says the agreement at the EU summit is a treaty that will be deposited at the UN. It is legally binding.

Q: That is what John Major said in 1992 about the deal the Danish got. It was subsequently shredded.

Cameron says the Danes have still got the protections they secured in 1992.

He says his deal will ensure that Britain keeps the pound, and that non-eurozone countries cannot be discriminated against.

If Britain leaves the EU, the euro will still be there. Business could face discrimination, he says.

Q: Can you say Britain will have control over its own laws as a result of this?

Cameron says Britain will be out of ever closer union as a result of his deal.

Leaving the EU might give the impression of sovereignty.

But, in practice, Britain would not have power over aspects of EU laws that might affect Britain. There would be “the illusion of sovereignty”, he says. But Britain would not have power.

Cameron says the “emergency brake” stopping EU migrants claiming full in-work benefits for up to four years could come into force next year.

And he has ensured it will stay in place for seven years, he says. So the rules will last until 2024.

And that means anyone coming here in 2024 might not get full benefits until 2028.

Q: How will the taper work? At what point do people get full benefits?

Cameron says that remains to be decided.

David Cameron's Marr interview

Andrew Marr is now interviewing David Cameron.

Q: Can you put the case for staying in the EU so that you can persuade Boris Johnson?

Cameron says the UK will be stronger, safer and better off in in the EU. Leaving would be a leap in the dark.

Q: You did not get what you wanted on migrant benefits, did you?

Cameron explains what he got in the EU renegotiation. Many people, including Nigel Farage, said that was not possible.

Q: You said in your manifesto you would stop paying any child benefit to EU migrants whose children live abroad. But they will still get some payments, won’t they?

Cameron says people can see what is in the manifesto and what was achieved.

David Cameron
David Cameron Photograph: BBC

Nigel Farage tells Marr we need to leave the EU so that politicians can take control again of UK laws. He says Michael Gove, the justice secretary, made this point in his long statement yesterday explaining why he was going to vote to leave the EU.

The Sunday Telegraph has an edited version of that statement. Here’s is what Gove says about the EU’s influence over UK ministers.

This growing EU bureaucracy holds us back in every area. EU rules dictate everything from the maximum size of containers in which olive oil may be sold (five litres) to the distance houses have to be from heathland to prevent cats chasing birds (five kilometres).

Individually these rules may be comical. Collectively, and there are tens of thousands of them, they are inimical to creativity, growth and progress. Rules like the EU clinical trials directive have slowed down the creation of new drugs to cure terrible diseases and ECJ judgements on data protection issues hobble the growth of internet companies. As a minister I’ve seen hundreds of new EU rules cross my desk, none of which were requested by the UK Parliament, none of which I or any other British politician could alter in any way and none of which made us freer, richer or fairer.

Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, is being interviewed by Andrew Marr now.

He says David Cameron did not ask for much in his EU renegotiation. And he won’t be able to deliver it, he says. He says the European parliament will be able to unpick what has been decided on EU benefits. And the European court of justice will be able to strike down everything else, he says.

Marr suggests Farage is being unfair. Cameron got a four-year benefit ban, he says. He says Farage himself was only asking for a five-year ban.

Farage says the real issue is whether or not Britain can stop migrants arriving in the first place.

Nigel Farage
Nigel Farage Photograph: BBC

Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader and Scottish first minister, is being interviewed by Andrew Marr now.

She says that people will be disappointed by David Cameron’s EU renegotiation. But the renegotiation is not particularly relevant, she says. She says she wants to start focusing instead on the big reasons for remaining in the EU.

Marr asks if she would use the powers the Scottish parliament is getting to top up benefits for EU migrants, to compensate for the cuts being imposed under Cameron’s “emergency brake”. Sturgeon says she has no plans to do that.

And Sturgeon repeats the claim she has made many times before that, if the UK voted to leave the EU while Scotland wanted to remain, that would almost certainly lead to a second independence referendum.

Nicola Sturgeon
Nicola Sturgeon Photograph: BBC

Updated

The Labour MP Kate Hoey, who is campaigning to leave the EU, is reviewing the papers on the Andrew Marr Show, along with the BBC’s Nick Robinson.

Hoey has just taken issue with a story saying there was a mass walk-out when George Galloway, the former Respect MP, was unveiled as the surprise guest at a Grassroots Out (GO) rally on Friday night. There is an account here, although this is not the story Hoey was criticising.

On Twitter James McGrory, head of communications for Britain Stronger in Europe, says Hoey is wrong to think that unveiling Galloway as a key Out campaigner was a mistake.

The best analysis of where Boris Johnson stands on the EU referendum is almost certainly the lengthy essay that the Sunday Times’s political editor Tim Shipman has written on the subject in his Red Box politics email.

Shipman says that Johnson does seem to be heading for the Out camp, but that we can’t be 100% sure. Here’s an extract.

So what do we actually know?

There are several cast iron facts. Being paid £275,000 a year by The Daily Telegraph means that Boris has been prevailed upon to end the nation’s suspense in his column for Monday’s edition of the newspaper. His spokesman will issue a short statement to the expectant world at 10pm this evening, in time - as was David Cameron’s deal on Friday night - for the main evening news bulletins.

With one exception the big beasts of the lobby are agreed that Boris is “leaning Out” but has not yet finally ended his prevarication. The Sunday Times quotes an ally saying his “heart is for Out” but that the decision is still “finely balanced” . Johnson appeared to have made his mind up on Friday evening, only to have a rethink yesterday. The same tone appears in the Sun on Sunday (“leaning towards the exit door”), the Mail on Sunday (“still agonising”) and the Observer (“genuinely torn”), which says that Boris wants to watch Cameron on the Andrew Marr Show this morning before making up his mind. Collectively the political editors of those four papers have, I should think, 80 years of lobby reporting experience between them.

Mr Robert Peston, newly returned to bestow his great oratory, flowing mane and insights upon we humble Westminster lifers, has insisted for three days that Boris will certainly opt for Out, a view he repeated last night on Twitter. This may well prove to be the case, indeed it is now the more likely outcome. And indeed it would not be the first time that Mr Peston has scooped the lot of us.

But unless he has greater insights than those in Johnson’s employ, Downing Street and Boris’s closest allies in the parliamentary party, his confidence is surprising. It is cruel but hardly irrelevant to point out that Mr Peston was equally confident, during his last sojourn in SW1, that Britain would join the euro - a few short days before Charlie Whelan ruled it out on the streets outside the Red Lion during the epic Europe fever of 1997. In short, Mr Peston may well be right at 10pm this evening and I am not one to decry bold reporting, but there have been moments over the last 48 hours when, according to all the sources I trust on this matter, he has also been wrong.

Shipman says it is important to recognise that Johnson is genuinely reluctant to see Britain turn its back on Europe.

One Boris ally says his principles as well as his calculations are dragging him both ways: “He genuinely thinks Britain should not turn its back on Europe at a time like this. He feels that very deeply, but he genuinely thinks the deal is pretty hopeless, that Cameron should have asked for more and that what they have come up with on sovereignty doesn’t do what he wants it to do.”

Shipman also ends with this superb quote.

The last word should perhaps reside with the man himself. He bumped into someone in Westminster recently and said: “I’m veering all over the place like a shopping trolley.” Which in a murky and confusing world has the merit of honesty.

The Shipman Red Box email is always well worth reading. You can sign up for it here.

Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson Photograph: Mark Thomas/REX/Shutterstock

Dominic Raab, the justice minister, has used an article in the Sunday Times (paywall) to explain why he will be voting to leave the EU. Here’s an extract.

Denis Healey, the former Labour defence secretary, once quipped of UK supporters of European integration: “Their Europeanism is nothing but imperialism with an inferiority complex.”

Healey foresaw today’s debate on the European Union. The argument for staying in is based on a fear of standing on our own two feet. The case for a new relationship, outside, is built on the opportunities of being masters of our own destiny ...

The “remain” campaign tells us Britain is too small to count and the heft of the EU gets deals done. Yet, to date, the EU itself has sealed deals only with medium-sized nations (South Korea is the largest) — and none with China, Brazil, Japan, India or the US.

Switzerland has free trade deals with more countries than the EU, including Japan and China, and is negotiating with India.

This matters. Since 2009 Britain has been selling more to non-EU countries than EU ones. Over the past decade, growth in UK exports outside the EU was double our rate within the EU.

Raab’s argument focuses on the potential trade benefits of being outside the EU, rather than the need to control immigration, the key issue for other Out campaigners. In that respect, his article his similar to the open letter the energy minister Andrea Leadsom published yesterday (pdf) explaining why should would be voting to leave.

Good morning. After the drama of the protracted, through-the-night EU summit and the first Saturday cabinet meeting since the Falklands war, David Cameron could be forgiven for wanting a rest. But the opening hours of an election campaign are often important in framing the debate and this morning we will see him in full-on persuader mode, using an interview on the Andrew Marr Show to make the case for Britain staying in Europe. He is also expected to give more details of his plans to introduce measures to affirm somehow the sovereignty of parliament.

But the day will also be dominated by speculation about one of the Tories who would like to succeed him, Boris Johnson. Having played footsie for months with the Out camp, the mayor of London is expected to confirm later today which side he will back in the referendum.

Here are the latest overnight developments.

  • The Observer says Cameron is mounting a last-ditch effort to woo Johnson to back his campaign to stay in the European Union, by drawing up plans for a new constitutional settlement that puts the sovereignty of British institutions beyond doubt.

The two dined at the London Mayor’s home on Tuesday, where they agreed the Prime Minister’s new EU deal was ‘thin’.

Shortly afterwards, Justice Secretary Mr Gove shocked No 10 by joining the ‘Out’ campaign to cut Britain’s ties with Brussels. The disclosure of the secret dinner – and the pair’s sharp criticism of the outcome of Mr Cameron’s negotiations – will fuel speculation about which side Mr Johnson will back in the forthcoming EU referendum.

Johnson will declare which way he is voting at 10pm this evening. Allies said he was close to deciding that he would back Brexit on Friday, but that the decision was now “finely balanced”.

“It’s a very difficult call for him,” one said. “He is really conflicted. I think his heart is for out, but there is an enormous amount of pressure.”

Cameron is “absolutely furious” at Johnson’s failure to commit to the “remain” campaign. In private remarks this weekend, the prime minister told friends: “I can’t understand why Boris, as leader of the great financial capital, won’t support the City.”

According to the Survation poll for The Mail on Sunday, 48 per cent of voters want to stay in the EU, with 33 in favour of leaving, and 19 per cent undecided. The first survey conducted since Mr Cameron’s marathon talks in Brussels on Thursday and Friday also found that 35 per cent believe he did well in the negotiations, against 30 per cent who say he did badly.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, the prime minister said those who wanted to leave would be forced to accept the free movement of people if they wanted a free trade deal with the rest of the EU.

He challenged Eurosceptics to explain to the public what Britain’s relationship would be like with Europe if the UK voted to leave, accusing them of making “no effort” to spell out their plans.

Warning that Britain would still have to contribute to EU coffers even if it left, Cameron said: “So far, the EU has never given full access to the single market without insisting on a contribution to the budget and free movement.”

Cameron also said a vote to remain was the only “responsible” course for those who wanted to keep Britain safe.

Even the most committed members of the ‘leave’ camp accept that there will inevitably be a short-term cost to leaving.

The question is whether it is balanced out by the long-term gains. It’s a very reasonable question – and I came incredibly close to answering ‘Yes, yes it is.’

But, in recent months, we have once again seen storm clouds gathering over the global economy. As a former financial analyst, I still take a keen interest in the markets. Far more important than what the commentators are saying is what the markets are forecasting: a significant global economic downturn ...

My heart says we are better off out. My head says it’s too risky right now. For the past six years, I’ve been doing everything I can to repair the damage Labour did to our national economy.

Here is the timetable for the day.

9am: David Cameron is interviewed on the Andrew Marr Show. Other guests include Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, and Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader.

11am: Chris Grayling, the leader of the Commons, Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary, and Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, are on the Sunday Politics.

If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on@AndrewSparrow.

I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time. Alternatively you could post a question to me on Twitter.

Updated

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