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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

EU referendum: David Cameron on BBC's Question Time EU Special - as it happened

David Cameron on the BBC’s Question Time EU Special.
David Cameron on the BBC’s Question Time EU Special. Photograph: BBC

Summary

Here are the main points from David Cameron’s appearance on Question Time.

  • Cameron appeared to concede that remain was failing to persuade people in the campaign when he said that voters were finding the arguments “perhaps quite confusing”. He made the point when asked why leave was in the lead. He went on:

I’ve got four days to go. I want to do better at getting this argument across.

  • He insisted that there was “no silver bullet” when it came to dealing with immigration. And he defended the idea of getting net migration below 100,000, although he described that as an “ambition”, not a target.
  • He summoned up the spirit of Churchill to make the case against quitting the EU. Responding to a man in the audience who compared him to a “21st-century Neville Chamberlain waving a piece of paper in the air and saying to the public ‘I have this promise’” (a reference to Cameron’s renegotiation), he said:

If we choose to leave, we can leave but let’s be clear if we do leave we are walking out the door, we are quitting, we are giving up on this organisation which even if we leave will have a huge effect on our lives, our children, on our opportunities, on our businesses.

I don’t think Britain at the end is a quitter. I think we stay and fight. That is what we should do. That is what made our country great and that’s how it will be great in the future.

At my office I sit two yards away from the Cabinet room where Winston Churchill decided in May 1940 to fight on against Hitler – the best and greatest decision anyone has made in our country.

He didn’t want to be alone, he wanted to be fighting with the French and with the Poles and with the others but he didn’t quit. He didn’t quit on Europe, he didn’t quit on European democracy, he didn’t quit on European freedom.

We want to fight for those things today. You can’t win, you can’t fight, if you are not in the room. You can’t win a football match if you are not on the pitch.

  • He came close to saying he would veto Turkey joining the EU if it were to happen while he was prime minister. He said:

I’m not going to be prime minister in three decades’ time. If this was going to happen in the next couple of years I would not support it, but it is not going to.

But he said there was no need to give a cast-iron promise to veto Turkey joining because it was not going to happen for decades. Accusing leave of not telling the truth about this, he said:

I think this is the biggest red herring in this whole referendum debate. I can’t find a single expert anywhere in the country or in Europe that thinks that Turkey is going to join in the next three decades ...

I feel strongly about this. People are getting through their letter boxes leaflets from leave saying basically Turkey is going to join the EU – not true.

But he also said that it was in Britain’s interests to encourage Turkey to think it could join the EU eventually because Britain wanted it to be “Western-facing”.

  • He said that it was impossible to know now why Jo Cox was killed, but that it was important to fight intolerance.

I think the most important thing for the politicians is to remember what [Cox] was all about, which was service, community, tolerance. These are values we should all try to live by and promote, in order to remember her.

I don’t think we know why exactly this happened or what the motivation was and we have to wait for the police investigation before we do that.

But I think what we do know is wherever we see intolerance, hatred, division, we should try and drive it out of our communities, out of our public life.

We have to be careful that debates can be passionate but we have to make sure that they are not based on those things.

  • He said leaving the EU would be irreversible.

I do believe it’s irreversible if we vote to leave, I don’t think there’s any prospect of rejoining.

If we were trying to rejoin we would have to join the single currency, we would have to join the Schengen no-borders zone, give up the British rebate - so I would see no prospect of us rejoining. This is a final decision.

You can’t jump out of the aeroplane and then try to scramble back into the cockpit.

  • He defended his decision to say Islamic State would welcome the UK leaving the EU.

I think the terrorists that want to do us harm want the west to be divided. They don’t want Britain and France and Belgium and Germany to work together to defeat terrorism. They’d like to see us separate from each other.

  • He defended George Osborne’s claim that Brexit would mean an emergency budget would be necessary this year.

That’s all from me for tonight.

Thanks for the comments.

Updated

Here is the verdict from the Guardian’s panel on Cameron’s Question Time performance. There are contributions from Polly Toynbee, Anne Perkins and Matthew d’Ancona.

And, just to be pedantic, David Cameron is wrong about Winston Churchill taking the key decision for Britain to fight on alone against Hitler on 28 May 1940 in the cabinet room at No 10. (See 7.18pm.) The key cabinet meeting took place in the House of Commons.

Boris Johnson writes about it rather well here, in an extract from his Churchill biography.

And here is one of the cabinet minutes.

Updated

Vote Leave says Cameron has 'no answers to people's concerns on immigration'

Here is the statement from Vote Leave’s chief executive, Matthew Elliott, on David Cameron’s performance on Question Time.

David Cameron repeatedly refused to say that he would veto Turkey joining the EU. That’s because - in his own words - he is the “strongest possible advocate” of Turkey joining. He has said before that he is “angry” that it is taking too long for Turkey to join. The EU has recently accelerated talks with Turkey with David Cameron’s support and UK taxpayers are sending £1bn to Turkey to help them join. You cannot trust Cameron on Turkey.

Cameron had no answers to people’s legitimate concerns on immigration tonight and failed to set out how he would meet his manifesto pledge to bring the numbers back down to the tens of thousands while remaining in the EU. He had no answer on how we would fund the NHS to cope with higher levels of immigration.

He has avoided speaking to the British public throughout the campaign because he knows that they do not believe him anymore on the EU. It showed tonight as he was openly mocked by the audience. If you don’t believe Cameron’s spin and want to take back control you need to Vote Leave on Thursday.

Updated

Cameron on Question Time - Verdict from the Twitter commentariat

And this is what political journalists and commentators are saying about David Cameron’s performance on Twitter.

It’s quite mixed, although generally people are quite positive about Cameron’s Churchill outburst, and they seem to think he was better towards the end.

From the Daily Mirror’s Jason Beattie

From the Spectator’s James Forsyth

From the Sun’s Tom Newton Dunn

From the BBC’s Andrew Neil

From the Sun’s Harry Cole

From the New Statesman’s George Eaton

From the Economist’s Jeremy Cliffe

From the Spectator’s Fraser Nelson

From STV’s Harry Smith

From the Sun’s Steve Hawkes

From Timothy Garton Ash

From Robert Harris

From the Sun on Sunday’s David Wooding

From Sky’s Faisal Islam

Updated

Here is the Britain Stronger in Europe spin on David Cameron’s performance. This is from the briefing they have sent out:

Tonight the PM set out a strong and clear case why we are stronger, safer, and better off staying in the EU.

He set out how:

- Leaving the EU is an irreversible decision. There is no turning back. Don’t risk your family’s future.

- It will hit people’s livelihoods and lead to a decade of uncertainty.

- We need to be in the room to fight Britain’s corner when the big decisions are being made.

- For a strong NHS and strong public services we need a strong economy – and for a strong economy we need to be part of the world’s biggest market. That’s why the chief executive of the NHS, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Midwives all say we are better off staying in the EU.

- Experts – including nine out of 10 economists – are clear that leaving the EU would wreck our economy, and put jobs on the line. If a mechanic told you not to drive your car because your brakes were faulty, and the engine was leaking oil, you wouldn’t drive it on the motorway.

- He spelt out why we are safer and stronger when we work together with other countries to fight terrorism and stand up to Putin.

- He reiterated that this is a crucial vote for young people. There will be more jobs and opportunities for our children and grandchildren if we stay in the EU.

- He was clear - if you don’t know, don’t risk it.

Updated

Cameron on Question Time - Snap verdict:

Cameron on Question Time - Snap verdict: The last 24 hours have been relatively good for remain, but that felt like a setback.

When Cameron did a similar Q&A with members of the public for Sky News two weeks ago the questions he attracted were probably more hostile (although also more focused on his record as prime minister generally), but there were moments when it felt as if he was actually winning the argument, and changing minds. Today, although he was as slick and fluent as ever, he sounded like a man mostly failing to persuade. Remain win comfortably on the economy, and Cameron’s line about not getting in a car if the mechanic says no works well. But on immigration he found it virtually impossible to defend his “cutting it to below 100,000” target (or ambition as it now is), and he was utterly spatchcocked when David Dimbleby put it to him that, contrary to what he was claiming, there was a silver bullet to immigration: leaving the EU. Cameron’s problem is that, although he instinctively supports the free market case for immigration (“We’ve got to just live with high immigration because it is good for growth”), which is a defensible intellectual position, he has instead spent years trying to pretend that EU, growth-enhancing free movement is somehow compatible with a 100,000 limit, which is is indefensible. Tonight it showed.

He was on equally tricky ground on Turkey. Cameron came closer than he has before to saying he would veto Turkey joining the EU if the decision came up while he was prime minister, and he actually made a good argument as to why it was in Britain’s interests to make Turkey think that long-term membership is a possibility. (See 7.22pm.) But his refusal to give a clear commitment to using the veto sounded weaselly.

Cameron’s line about people not being convinced yet by his arguments because they were “confused” (see 7.01pm) just sounded patronising. And there was little he said in the section about whether he could remain as prime minister if Britain voted for Brexit that would persuade anyone he honestly thinks he can survive for long in those circumstances.

Mostly Cameron sounded a bit underpowered. He came alive most when challenged by the angry man who accused him of being a modern-day Chamberlain, and he responded with his mini-oration about Churchill and the non-quitting spirit of May 1940 that led Churchill to decide to carry on fighting Hitler instead of suing of peace. It was rousing stuff. But it was also somewhat inappropriate; Britain faced a threat to its very survival in 1940, which it does not face now. Not even Jeremy Corbyn thinks the combination of Brexit and Boris would be as disastrous as a Wehrmacht invasion. One version of Godwin’s law has it that whoever mentions Hitler first in an argument has lost. Alternatively, you could say that whoever needs to summon the spirit of Churchill when it is not called for has lost too.

Updated

Q: Isn’t this deal on the table just a starting point?

Cameron agrees. If we stay, we can work for further reform. If we leave, it is over.

And we have a special status, he says.

And that’s it. I will post a snap summary shortly.

Q: Why do we have to keep subsidising poorer EU countries through our contributions, when we could be using that money here?

Cameron says the EU budget is going down.

And there would be no savings from leaving. All the experts say we would lose from leaving.

Q: Young people want to remain in the EU. Would it be fair if their future is determined by other people voting to leave?

Cameron says he hopes people will vote to remain.

Updated

Cameron says leaving the EU would mean going back to austerity.

Q: Stuart Rose said wages would go up if we left.

Cameron says most experts say the economy would suffer.

Q: So why did Rose say that?

Cameron says what he said is more complicated than that.

David Dimbleby reads out the Rose quote.

Cameron says Rose went on to say other things.

He says he does not want to see jobs move to the continent.

Q: Will you veto the accession of Turkey?

Cameron says it is not going to happen for decades, so that is a red herring. He cannot find any expert who thinks it will join in the next three decades. He says that to join, Turkey would have to close 35 renegotiation chapters. It has closed one. This is completely untrue.

Q: You said you would support Turkish membership. Would you block it?

Cameron says it is not going to happen in the next few decades.

Q: But do you support it?

Cameron says if it happened in the next two years, he would not support it. But it is not going to happen for decades. It is a red herring.

He says Britain is in favour of Turkish membership in principle because we want it to be a Western-facing country. We want it to respect human rights, and stop locking up journalists. That is not going well, he says.

Updated

Q: Your EU renegotiation can be overturned. But you are like Neville Chamberlain, waving a piece of paper. The EU dictatorship can overrule you.

Cameron says 27 other EU leaders have backed him.

He says they know we can quit. But he does not think Britain is a quitter.

He says he sits two yards away from the cabinet room where Winston Churchill decided to carry on fighting in World War Two. He did not quit. And we should not quit either. You cannot win a football match if you are not on the pitch, he says.

Updated

Cameron says if EU migrants cannot get work, they have to go home. The freedom of movement to work is not an unqualified right.

Many members of the audience protest, indicating they do not accept what he is saying.

Cameron says the EU welfare changes he negotiated will last until 2028.

Q: Is there anything fair about an immigration system that prioritises unskilled workers from within the EU over skilled workers from outside?

Cameron says we effectively have two systems.

Is it worth leaving the single market to address this problem. Cameron says he does not think it is, because of the damage that would do to the economy.

Cameron says there is no silver bullet.

Q: There is a silver bullet. You could just leave.

Cameron says cutting non-EU migration is hard.

Q: Why? You are in charge of that.

Cameron says it is hard.

And if we left the single market that would damage the economy.

Q: Theresa May says there are changes to the freedom of movement rules coming up. She proposed further changes.

Cameron says there are changes in the pipeline.

Q: So she was not proposing further measures.

Cameron says this is an ongoing process. The more you can do, the better.

Updated

Q: We should leave the EU and negotiate our own trade deal?

Cameron says the best trade deal the EU has done has been with Canada. But it took seven years to negotiate. And it does not cover services and farmers.

Q: People are fed up with the establishment. You should not threaten us with a budget.

Q: Why are you telling us Europe is growing? They have big problems.

Cameron says the Greek economy has problems. But the Spanish, French and German economies are growing. The Irish economy grew by 7% last year.

Q: You are not doing anything to compensate for the impact immigration is having on services.

Cameron says he is putting resources into the NHS. Listen to the people who run the NHS: they all want us to stay in, he says.

Q; Why did you say you would bring immigration down below 100,000 when you knew well you could not achieve this?

Cameron says that is the right ambition for this country.

As late as 2008, there were more EU nationals leaving the EU than coming in.

He says we need to cut migration from outside the EU. And the changes he negotiated will make “a big difference” to EU migration, he says.

Q: Is getting net migration below 100,000 still your target?

Cameron says it is his ambition.

Q: Is it your target?

Cameron says he wants to control immigration. But there are bad ways of controlling immigration. Leaving the single market would be a bad way, because it would harm the economy.

Updated

Q: The EU used to have 20% of world trade. Now it is only 15%. Is that a success?

Cameron says that is because of the rise of countries like China.

He says trade with the EU is growing in overall terms.

Cutting ourselves from our main market would be economic madness, he says.

Cameron says if we leave the EU, other EU countries will be deciding the rules for our continent without us there.

Q; If experts are so sure leaving is a bad idea, why are the people not convinced? And why is Leave in the lead?

Cameron says people are confused.

He says there are four days to go.

Q: When the British public vote to leave, how can you remain?

Cameron says he has said he would obey the instructions of the British people. And he does not want to muddle up the questions on the ballot paper.

Q: You says this is more important than an election. If you lose an election, you are out. So why won’t you be out if you lose this.

Cameron says he would obey the instructions of the British people.

Q: To do what you think is wrong ...

This gets a round of applause.

Cameron says he held an election on the basis that he would hold a referendum.

Q: If we voted to leave, would you call an election, so people could vote on the way forward?

This gets a round of applause.

Cameron says we had an election last year. He set out his plans for a referendum.

Q: But people did not vote on what would happen next?

With a referendum, you vote one way or another.

Q: If this would be so bad, why did you say we could do okay outside the EU?

Cameron says Britain could survive outside the EU. But he wants what’s best for the country.

Q: You are listening to the experts who get things wrong.

Cameron says if you were building a house, you would want to listen to an expert.

Q: If leaving would be so bad, why did you give the people a choice?

Cameron says some decisions are so important they must be taken by the people.

But he would make the point that this decision is irreversible. You cannot bail out, then get back into the cockpit.

Q: Is the emergency Brexit budget punishment for voters? And wouldn’t it push us into recession?

Cameron says he is absolutely convinced our economy would suffer if we leave.

If we leave the single market, it stands to common sense that we will have less growth.

You would make the economy smaller.

George Osborne was saying, if that happened you would have to borrow more, or tax more or cut spending.

Q: Will there be an autumn budget if we leave?

Cameron says there will be a cost from leaving the EU if the experts are right.

Q: Would you do it in the autumn?

Cameron says you cannot leave it. We got out of the hole in the past. He does not want to go back to the past.

  • Cameron suggests he would have an emergency budget this year if Britain votes to leave the EU.

Q: Steve Hilton says your forecasts are made up. He says he knows, because he used to do it.

Cameron says it is not just the Treasury saying this. Bodies like the IFS, and the Bank of England and the NIESR say this too.

You would not get in a car if the experts advised against it, he says, using the line he rehearsed in the Sunday Times. (See 6.14pm.)

Updated

Q: I have found the campaigns confusing. I don’t know how I am going to vote. Both sides should feel ashamed of how they have behaved.

The woman who asks this gets a round of applause.

Updated

Q: Has this referendum soured the political debate in this country in the light of the murder of Jo Cox?

David Cameron says his heart breaks when he thinks of Cox’s family.

He says Cox represented humanity and tolerance. We should respect that.

He says we do not know why she was killed.

Q: Has it been a sour debate?

Cameron says there have been some moments, like the Nigel Farage poster, that are just wrong. It was wrong in fact, because it showed refugees, and it was wrong morally too.

Q: You said the leader of Isis would be happy if we left the EU.

Cameron says that is true. The terrorists who want to do us harm want the west to be divided.

Q: And do you think the argument about immigration is squalid, as John Major did?

Cameron says he will use his own words.

Updated

David Cameron on Question Time

Question Time is starting.

Here are some pictures from today’s EU referendum campaign events.

Boris Johnson (left) and Steve Hilton at a Vote Leave campaign event at Old Billingsgate market, London.
Boris Johnson (left) and Steve Hilton at a Vote Leave campaign event at Old Billingsgate market, London. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA
Remain campaigners pose kissing each other near the Houses of Parliament
Remain campaigners pose kissing each other near the Houses of Parliament. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images
A campaigner for Vote Leave holds a placard during a rally in Hyde Park in London
A campaigner for Vote Leave holds a placard during a Britain Stronger in Europe rally in Hyde Park in London. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images
Alastair Campbell listens to a speaker during a rally for Britain Stronger in Europe in Hyde Park.
Alastair Campbell listens to a speaker during a rally for Britain Stronger in Europe in Hyde Park. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images
Boris Johnson speaks at a Vote Leave campaign event at Old Billingsgate market, London.
Boris Johnson (right) speaks alongside (from left to centre) Priti Patel, Kate Hoey and Michael Gove at a Vote Leave campaign event at Old Billingsgate market, London. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA
The Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, greets supporters after arriving in the Lib Dem Vote Remain campaign bus
The Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, greets supporters after arriving in the Lib Dem Vote Remain campaign bus. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

Vote Leave has posted this on Twitter ahead of David Cameron’s Question Time appearance tonight.

MPs will form a procession of cross-party unity as they head to a church service after paying tribute to Labour MP Jo Cox in the House of Commons.

Each MP will pair off with another from a rival party as they walk from the chamber to St Margaret’s Church in Westminster.

They will gather in the House of Commons at 2.30pm and spend around 90 minutes honouring Cox, who was fatally shot and stabbed outside her constituency surgery on Thursday.

There had been talk of MPs mingling on the green benches with those from rival parties in a show of cross-party cooperation that would be a break from convention.

However, Labour has decided against this as many of the party’s MPs wanted to sit with their friends for support, although it is possible some could do so of their own accord.

Instead, they will partner with MPs from the opposite benches as they proceed to the service at around 4pm.

Updated

David Cameron will be appearing on the BBC Question Time EU Special soon. It is his last major TV appearance of the campaign.

He may have caused some unhappiness in the Leave camp earlier by using Twitter to identify the Remain cause with Jo Cox, the Labour MP killed on Thursday.

Here are some of his other tweets this afternoon.

Here’s a quote from his Sunday Times interview today (paywall); it’s a line he may well end up repeating again tonight.

If you were about to get into your family car and drive your family at high speed on a motorway and the mechanic said to you, ‘The brakes are faulty, the fuel is leaking, don’t get in that car,’ you would listen to that expert. Would you take a risk with your family getting into a faulty car? You wouldn’t do it.

We should listen to those that are saying, as are an increasing number of economists and institutions who are wholly independent, our economy will be smaller, there will be fewer jobs, there will be lower wages, there will be higher prices, there will be lower tax revenues and therefore public services will be damaged.

You can read all the day’s earlier Guardian EU referendum stories here.

And here’s my live blog from earlier covering what was said on all the Sunday morning political programmes.

The Question Time programme starts at 6.45pm and runs until 7.30pm. I will be covering it live, posting a snap summary and then rounding up the best reaction and analysis until around 9pm.

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