Afternoon summary
- Gordon Brown has compared the Leave campaign to Donald Trump’s in America. In a speech in Leicester he said in many countries globalisation was fuelling a desire to “bring control back home”. He said:
It is not just here in Britain, it is in Trump in America, other movements in America, other movements in Europe - Greece, Spain, Germany, Austria. Globalisation creates this sense there’s a runaway train out of control. What we need to do is to show we can manage globalisation and global change in the public interest but at the same time we have got to respect people’s love of national identity.
We’ve got to show that we can balance the autonomy that people want with the co-operation we need. That is what the European Union is about.
- Enda Kenny, the Irish prime minister, has said that a vote to leave the EU would lead to the return of some form of border controls at the border with the Republic. Speaking at the University of Ulster, he said:
The re-establishment of customs checks on the border, or indeed of any customs arrangements, would be a regrettable and backward step for North-South trade and cooperation ...
We are standing here today less than 50 miles from the United Kingdom’s only land border. Can anyone credibly suggest that nothing would change if that became the western border of the European Union? We remember when it was a hard border. We remember the delays, the cost and the division. One of the most beneficial effects of the peace process and our common membership of the EU has been the virtual elimination of that border.
- George Osborne has said that Brexit could lead to disability benefits being cut. Taking part in a Q&A with Sky News viewers on Facebook, the chancellor was asked what leaving the EU would mean for disability benefits. He replied:
How can a poorer country afford exactly the same on the health service, the education system, support for the vulnerable like disabled people, support for the rural communities like this one, support for housing?
If the country’s poorer, it’s got less money. Everybody accepts that if we leave the EU we are trading less, there’s lots of uncertainty, businesses aren’t investing and there is less money coming into the Exchequer. So we need to think this through. It’s not possible to fund all these things if the country is poorer.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Updated
Boris Johnson has had a chance meeting with his pro-Remain father Stanley on the Tube, the Press Association reports.
A fluke meeting on the Tube saw Boris Johnson’s pro-Remain father congratulate his Brexit-backing son on the way he handled himself during a testy TV debate.
A last minute decision to catch the Bakerloo line back to Westminster after returning from a Leave rally in Buckinghamshire saw Stanley Johnson get into the same carriage as his ex-mayor son by chance.
Despite being on opposite sides of the issue, Mr Johnson snr said he heard the ex-mayor handled himself well in last week’s ITV live debate when the all-female pro-Remain panel were accused by some of ganging-up on Boris with personalised attacks.
Johnson snr spoke approvingly about the way his son conducted himself on the ITV debate, stating: “Apparently you were very good at not being hassled by the women.”
Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, has said it is “patently untrue” for Migration Watch to say that Turkey joining the EU could lead to 100,000 Turks a year coming to the UK. “Turkey is not about to join the EU, and the visas allegedly being talked about are three month temporary visas for the Schengen area, which Britain is not even part of,” he said. “So how can they possibly say that Turkey could in any way increase Britain’s permanent population?”
(The headline projections in the Migration Watch report do not include Turks coming to the UK. But it does say Turkey joining the EU in 2024 could lead to 100,000 Turks coming every year from 2031.)
Here is a link to the ICM poll tables.
Full Guardian/ICM ONLINE tables for today's poll @martinboon https://t.co/hugCNuBeEN
— Tom Clark (@guardian_clark) June 13, 2016
The Management Consultancies Association has published a survey of its members, and it says 91% of them think that remaining in the EU would be “best for UK business”.
John Curtice - master of understatement.
After Guardian polls shows Leave 53 Remain 47, poll guru John Curtice says: 'The PM must be feeling discomfort.'https://t.co/WvVw4J5YH4
— Paul johnson (@paul__johnson) June 13, 2016
New ICM/Guardian phone and online polls both give Leave a 6-point lead
The latest Guardian/ICM poll is out.
And here’s how it starts.
Support for leaving the EU is strengthening, with both phone and online surveys reporting a six-point lead, according to a new pair of Guardian/ICM polls.
Leave now enjoys a 53%-47% advantage once “don’t knows” are excluded, according to the research conducted over the weekend compared with a 52%-48% split reported by ICM a fortnight ago.
The figures will make grim reading for David Cameron, George Osborne and the Labour party. They follow a fortnight in which immigration became the dominant issue in the European campaign with the publication of official figures recording that net migration had risen to a near-record 333,000 in the year’s second quarter.
Prof John Curtice of Strathclyde University, who analyses all the available referendum polling data on his website whattheukthinks.org, noted that, after the new ICM data, the running average “poll of polls” would stand at 52% for leave and 48% for remain, the first time leave has been in such a strong position.
Eurostat, the EU’s statistics bureau, has released figures today showing that almost 900,000 people acquired EU citizenship in 2014. Here is an extract from its release.
In 2014, 889,100 people obtained citizenship of an EU-28 Member State, a decrease of 9 % compared with 2013. This decline occurred after two consecutive years of increase. The main contribution to the decrease at EU level came from the United Kingdom (81,900 fewer persons were granted British citizenship than in 2013), followed by Spain (-19,900), Belgium (-16,000), Greece (-8,600) and Sweden (-6,700).
Most new citizenships in 2014 were granted by Spain (205,900 or 23 % of the EU-28 total), Italy (129,900 or 15 %), the United Kingdom (125,600 or 14 %), Germany (110,600 or 12 %) and France (105,600 or 12 %).
Of those acquiring citizenship of an EU-28 Member State, 88 % had previously been citizens of non-EU countries. Of these, citizens of Morocco made up the highest numbers, followed by citizens of Albania, Turkey, India and Ecuador.
Of the 125,600 people granted UK citizenship, 18% are from India, 10% from Pakistan and 6% from Nigeria.
In the UK the “citizenships acquired per 100 resident foreigner” rate is at about the EU average.
Matthew Elliott, the Vote Leave chief executive, says the figures show why Britain needs to regain control of its borders.
These figures show how little control we have over our borders while we stay in the EU.
Since 2009, close to four million people have been given the right to come to the UK, with Moroccans, Albanians and Turkish citizens the main beneficiaries. The number of people coming to the EU is increasing each year and it is becoming unsustainable. This level of migration puts a strain on our invaluable public services, as well as jobs and wages. The British people are absolutely right to be concerned.
This, from my colleague Patrick Wintour, is very intriguing.
Senior Labour figures backing Remain will argue Cameron EU migrant deal is insufficient & new direct controls on economic migration required
— Patrick Wintour (@patrickwintour) June 13, 2016
Vote Leave says Brown had nothing to say on immigration
Here is Gisela Stuart, the Labour MP and Vote Leave chair, responding to Gordon Brown’s speech and his Today interview earlier.
We know that hardworking British people are feeling the strains caused by uncontrolled migration - and that they are sick and tired of being told their concerns are somehow illegitimate.
The Remain campaign have nothing to say on immigration, and Gordon Brown added nothing to their case today.
As an immigrant myself, I am conscious of benefits immigration brings to this country - but it needs to be controlled. I have been very clear that I would like to see the introduction of an Australian Points based system - something that would also serve to end the discrimination inherent in the current system. But the fact of the matter is that the democratically elected UK parliament is prevented from doing any such thing because of the EU’s obsession with open borders. The only way to take back control of our borders and our country is to Vote Leave on 23 June.
Angela Eagle, Labour’s shadow business secretary, said she felt the election was “on a knife edge” and Labour had to focus on areas where the party could get the best support out.
“It’s harder to get a feel for a referendum than in a general election,” she told the Guardian on the Labour battle bus in Birmingham, as part of a day of campaigning with senior Labour women. “Anyone ought to be worried about the polls that show we might, in nine days, be voting to leave because of the effect that will have on people I have spent my life representing.”
Immigration was not always the main issue on the doorstep for those who were leaning towards leave, she said, but also a general feeling of frustration the slow pace of change in their local communities.
It’s a visceral us-and-them thing, not only immigration at all. The feeling is ‘why doesn’t anything change? how can we make things better?’ When you explain the figures though, then it’s different.
That’s why I said, ‘get that lie off your bus’ [about the £350m-a-week to the EU slogan on the Leave campaign bus]. It’s a lie. The Turkish poster is a lie. And it’s being done by a cabal of right-wing Thatcherites who don’t want to save the health service and don’t give much of a damn about public services in this country, so for them to campaign as if they do is fundamentally dishonest.
Though unwilling to tell the prime minister directly to give way to Labour voices, Eagle said his TV appearances “do not help with the Labour vote.”
It would be helpful though, we are trying to get our messages heard about the general psychodrama of the blue on blue attack. That is sucking all of the oxygen out of the room.
Jeremy [Corbyn] is up and down the country, pursuing an itinerary that would make a 25-year-old tired, he has not stopped. We are doing our best, but if we are not reported, it is very difficult. This whole thing is about Tory big beasts having a battle like rutting stags, but it’s far more important, this vote, than any of that.
According to Number 10, David Cameron is not spending his time worrying about the collapse of Western civilisation. The Press Association has filed this, from the afternoon lobby briefing, prompted by Donald Tusk’s comments earlier. (See 1.03pm.)
Downing Street said Mr Cameron was “focused on the issue that is on the ballot paper” when asked if he was worried about the future of Western civilisation.
The prime minister’s official spokeswoman added: “We will leave Donald Tusk to speak for himself. The prime minister has set out many times how he views the opportunities and risks for the United Kingdom.”
Updated
Voters have heard enough from Cameron, say Labour MPs Thornberry and Phillips
“There are plenty of good people now who can make the case, we really don’t need to keep hearing from David Cameron,” Emily Thornberry, the shadow defence secretary, bemoaned. “Plenty of women!”
It’s women’s voices which were the priority today, with almost every senior Labour woman, from Angela Eagle, Harriet Harman and Maria Eagle, packed onto the red battle bus to tour the West Midlands, stopping off at the Sure Start centre in Walsall.
In between playing peek-a-boo with a delighted toddler at the centre, Jess Philips, MP for the neighbouring Birmingham Yardley constituency, was in full agreement about the need for new voices. “I think the country knows what he [Cameron] thinks now. We don’t need to hear it any more.”
Philips said she believed arguments about public services were most likely to win over undecided voters in Labour heartlands. Her constituents, she said, “have lost so many services already, it’s not a doom on the horizon, it’s a reality for them. This centre will have had a least a third of its funding cut already.”
Labour need the space to make this case, Thornberry insisted, to stop Tories on the leave side using Brexit as the answer to strains on public services. “It’s ill in the mouths of Tories who have been the most enthusiastic in cutting back services, they want to use it as a plaster over the cracks of things they have created in the first place.”
Updated
Brown says this has been an amazing campaign. He says Labour have been saying for years you cannot trust the Tories on the NHS. Now are finding Michael Gove and Boris Johnson and Iain Duncan Smith are saying the same thing.
Even the Tories don’t trust the Tories on the health service.
He says during the campaign people are saying they do not have the facts.
That is why the Labour document is so important, he says.
He ends with a story about The Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess. Brown says he did not know why it was such a bleak story. But Burgess came to speak at the Edinburgh Books Festival, and said that he had written 21 chapters. But his American publishers would only publish the first 20. They left out the 21st, which was about redemption.
He says people should use the referendum campaign to write the 21st chapter, to show that the EU can be better.
(According to The Clockwork Orange’s Wikipedia entry, this is correct.)
And that’s it.
Updated
The Sun’s Craig Woodhouse is not impressed by Brown’s response to his question. (See 4pm.)
Rather than answering my question on Labour worries around immigration, Brown just accused The Sun of having the same "agenda" as the BBC
— Craig Woodhouse (@craigawoodhouse) June 13, 2016
Gordon Brown brought in to re-launch remain campaign, ends up picking fights with The Sun and BBC. Way to go.
— Craig Woodhouse (@craigawoodhouse) June 13, 2016
Brown is now talking about patriotism, and how after the Scottish referendum he did a DNA test which showed his family were originally from Sweden.
Q: [From the Mirror’s Ben Glaze] How can you reassure Labour supporters worried about immigration that their concerns are being addressed?
Brown says it is important to fund services better in areas that are affected.
He says he does not live in London. He hears people’s concerns.
But it is also important to tackle illegal immigration.
Q: [From the Sun’s Craig Woodhouse] On Today this morning you complained about the BBC having an agenda, on immigration. But aren’t you implicitly dismissing the concerns of Labour supporters?
Brown says the Sun has an agenda. It has opposed immigration for years.
He says it is important to help communities affected by immigration.
The Sun complained about Albanians coming into the UK, he says. But the only way you can address these problems is by international cooperations, he says.
Q: [From my colleague Anushka Asthana] Some Labour voters just do not accept your arguments. They feel left behind by globalisation and they do not support immigration. How will Labour prevent a Scotland-style backlash?
Brown says he accepts that people feel left behind.
Politicians have to show how they can manage globalisation better, he says. He says the document published today illustrates five ways in which this could be done.
He says when Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell are working with “my old friend Peter Mandelson” on this agenda, something really is happening.
Brown's Q&A
Brown is now taking questions. The first ones are from members of the public.
Q: Today Leave.EU put out a poster seeking to capitalise on the Orlando killings. What do you think of that?
Brown says he wants to send a message of support. What happened was atrocious and appalling. We should stand by America and send our support, he says.
Q: How can we defend multiculturalism?
Brown says the contribution that immigrants have made to the UK is so important. People deserve to be treated fairly, and without discrimination.
Leicester is a great example of a community that works together, he says.
Leicester FC did not have the same amount of money as other teams. But it had teamwork.
Brown is now winding up.
What sort of message would it send to the world if we decided to leave the EU, he asks. We should be a leader in Europe, not leaving it, and that’s the message we should send on 23 June.
Brown is now talking about Nelson Mandela.
And we are getting to the Amy Winehouse anecdote - which anyone familiar with a Brown speech will have heard before.
It still works; the audience like it.
Brown says in every single century, apart from this one, Europe has been at war. And every generation except ours has had to fight.
Brown mocks the Leave camp for not having any foreign leaders who are Brexit would be a good idea. Michael Gove said the UK could be like Albania, he says. But even Albania said Britain should stay in the EU.
Brown says the Leave camp have got Donald Trump. Did you see the poll about Trump in America, he asks. Asked how they would feel about a Trump presidency, 70% said they would be insecure - and 30% said they would be Canadian.
And he says Trump was asked about the three greatest Americans. The other two were Lincoln and Washington, he replied.
Brown says this is a Labour agenda he is putting forward. It is backed by Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Tom Watson and Alan Johnson. It has been published today (pdf), he says.
And now Brown is talking about illegal immigration. Again, this is a problem that can only be addressed by cooperation, he says.
Brown says EU cooperation is essential for the UK to be able to make a difference in the Middle East.
Brown is now talking about how the EU is necessary to deal with the scandal of tax havens.
He says he wishes he had known about the scale of tax avoidance, as revealed by the Panama Papers, when he was prime minister.
Brown says the EU has guarantee workers’ rights in the UK.
It makes sense to have EU legislation guaranteeing minimum standards, so as to avoid a race to the bottom.
This is from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.
People were queuing in rain to hear Brown, lots of affection for him here even if you don't always hear it! pic.twitter.com/N5lK3sl1Xh
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) June 13, 2016
Brown is now speaking about energy, and what could be achieved if the EU got better at pooling energy.
(His speech is very similar to this one he delivered last month.)
Brown is now onto policy. He says the key challenge in the future is to get the right balance between national autonomy, and the cooperation we need.
He says 45% of UK exports go to the EU. And 3.2m jobs depend on those businesses.
He says opening up the single market in the EU could create another 500,000 jobs, according to the best estimates.
He says when parents think about their children’s prospects, or students think about their own prospects, they should remember that.
He is now talking about the 1980s, and Jacque Delors. He says he went to meet Delors when he was president of the European commission and Delors said Margaret Thatcher hated him for eight reasons: because he was French, a socialist, a trade unionist, a bureaucrat, a pro-European and and federalist.
(Brown leaves out the other two reasons.)
Gordon Brown is speaking now.
He is not speaking from a text and it’s quite a discursive speech, with lots of anecdotes.
He is currently talking about when Labour first tried to join the common market, and George Brown’s drunken exploits on the continent.
Gordon Brown's speech
Glenis Willmott, leader of the Labour MEPs, is introducing Gordon Brown.
She says he came to Brussels and gave a speech recently that was so good that even the Ukip MEPs were clapping.
Here is the venue in Leicester where Gordon Brown will be speaking shortly.
Lunchtime summary
- Leave.EU, a Ukip-backed campaign not linked to the official Vote Leave campaign, has been strongly criticised for putting a message on Twitter saying people should vote to leave the EU to avoid “an Orlando-style atrocity here before too long”. The tweet has since been deleted. But Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secetary, said it was “shameful and cowardly”. He went on:
It takes courage to stand by your principles and your friends when they are attacked, whether in Orlando, Paris or Brussels.
Doing so makes us stronger and shows our resolve to stand up for our values and our way of life in the face of those who hold both in such murderous contempt.
And Nicky Morgan, the education secretary, said:
Using the tragic deaths of innocent people to make a political point is simply shameful.
Leave.EU must apologise for the hurt they have caused and apologise immediately.
And Vote Leave need to condemn such despicable tactics and make clear that the Orlando attack has nothing whatsoever to do with the EU debate in this country.
Labour’s Gisela Stuart, chair of the Vote Leave board, has also condemned the poster.
- Donald Tusk, president of the European council, has said Brexit could eventually lead to the downfall of Western political civilisation. (See 1.01pm.)
- Gordon Brown, the former Labour prime minister, has said illegal immigration is a more serious problem than immigration from the EU. (See 9.10am.) In response, Brendan Chilton, general secretary of Labour Leave, said:
Gordon Brown has got this totally wrong. The problem is that we cannot control EU immigration. Open-door EU immigration means that we cannot do anything about the number of people coming into the country. We have to sit on our hands and watch the devastating impact it has on British working people; on their wages, on blue-collar jobs and our traditional industries. If we remain in the EU this is only set to get far worse.
- Migration Watch has said some 100,000 migrants from Turkey could arrive in the UK every year by the mid-2030s if the country joins the European Union. It also said levels of net migration would continue to be over 250,000 a year for at least 20 years even if Turkey does not join the EU. (See 12.48pm.)
- Michael Gove, the justice secretary, has said the Scottish parliament could get new powers over immigration if the UK leaves the European Union. In an interview on BBC Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland, he said “it would be for Scotland to decide” how many immigrants it admitted to the country in the event of Brexit. Asked how many immigrants could come to Scotland, he replied:
It would be for Scotland to decide. Because, under any proposals we put forward we believe that a points-based immigration policy, similar to the one that was actually put forward as a model for an independent Scotland by Nicola Sturgeon, would be the right approach.
Holyrood would be strengthened if we left the EU. The Scottish Parliament would have new powers over fishing, agriculture, over some social areas and potentially over immigration.
But Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, said there was no guarantee Westminster would give these powers to Scotland.
I trust he was asked to explain exactly how that happens in absence of indy or UKG agreement to devolve immigration https://t.co/W1rWMdEyBQ
— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) June 13, 2016
Politicians who opposed Indy now pretending that #brexit is great idea because it will give us powers of Indy probably shouldn't be trusted!
— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) June 13, 2016
Alex Salmond, the former Scottish prime minister, said Gove’s comments were undermined by the fact that his government was not helping the Brain family to stay in Scotland.
Scotland had some discretion on immigration policy to attract young families to the Highlands but that was removed by Gove and his Tory colleagues. Even now, all the home secretary has to do is to allow the Brains to stay and keep the commitment made to this young family - there is no European restriction whatsoever on her ability to do that.
So here is a direct challenge to Gove: as current justice secretary he has not hitherto lifted a finger to help this family he now claims to be concerned about.He now claims to want Scotland to decide immigration and the overwhelming majority of MPs and MSPs back the Brains. So let him today make a public statement urging his Tory colleague the home secretary to let the Brains work while they apply for the right to remain permanently in Scotland.
The truth is of course is that the Brexiteers will say anything at this stage in the campaign. They run about England telling people they are going to slash immigration and now Gove comes to Scotland to tell us we will be able to attract more people.
- BT’s 80,000 staff have been told company bosses and union leaders back remaining in a reformed EU.
- An academic has claimed the Treasury analysis “grossly exaggerated” the impact quitting the European Union would have on the nation’s finances. As the Press Association reports, most economic modelling has found that Brexit would make little difference to Britain’s economy, the study published by the Cass Business School claimed. But the government has ignored the waves of research, instead publishing “highly prejudiced” reports warning the UK would be poorer by 4,300 per household by 2030 and be hit by an immediate recession, author David Blake said. The City University London professor accused the Treasury of becoming a “propaganda machine” for Brussels.
-
Former Tesco boss Sir Terry Leahy has urged the British people to vote to stay in the European Union, reiterating his warning that food prices will rise as a result of Brexit.
Updated
Here is Saira Grant, chief executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, responding to the Migration Watch forecast. (See 12.48pm.)
Migration Watch accepts that in the short term only economic failure will reduce immigration into the UK. Another recession is a high price to pay for a drop in demand for workers and would hit those on the lowest pay hardest.
Despite a stringent points-based system in existence for non-EU migrants, currently non-EU migration is actually higher than EU migration. This is because we have a very real need for migrant workers and an Australian-style points-based system will not reduce that need. Australia actually has far higher per capita migration than we see in the UK.
Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, has been campaigning in Ramsgate this morning.
Here is the full text of Donald Tusk’s interview with Bild.
In it, the president of the European council also said that Turkey would not become a member of the EU “in its current state”.
Anthony Barnett has written about Gordon Brown’s proposals for EU reform in the latest chapter of Blimey, it could be Brexit!, the book on the EU referendum that he is writing in instalments and publishing at Open Democracy. Here’s an extract.
Gordon Brown has tried to make a positive case for Remain by calling on the country to “Lead not Leave” in the New Statesman and he has some gritty proposals. But his positioning suffers from two crippling weaknesses. David Cameron’s EU deal which the referendum will confirm if we vote Remain explicitly marginalises the UK from the centre of the EU’s affairs and disqualifies Britain from “leading” its development (as I show in Chapter 3). The whole point of Cameron’s effort was to separate the UK from any commitment to the EU as a collective endeavour. Brown has now been moved up to head the Remain campaign with a major speech, naturally - as most of the UK media has stopped reading for itself - no one is pointing out that the Brussels Treaty stipulates that Britain can’t lead and must follow EU policy. This is in return for “ever closer union” not applying to the UK.
Second, Brown’s New Labour trope echoes Tony Blair’s obsession with projecting global power - and we all know what happened with that. It too is a form of Great British egoism that is fundamentally seeking to conserve the nation rather than being positive about Europe. Indeed, Blair and Mandelson have been advising the government’s Remain campaign and Brown’s intervention is a variant of Cameron’s.
The full book, which explores the underlying historical and political factors behind the referendum, is well worth reading.
Lord Butler, the former cabinet secretary, has given an interview to PoliticsHome about the EU referendum. He said that he thought it was possible that the referendum could lead to Labour and the Tories both splitting into pro and anti-EU parties, and that this might be a good thing.
I am not a member of any political party but I think British politics might be a great deal healthier if the Conservatives, and Labour, did split into pro and anti-European parties. You could just possibly see a realignment of the political institutions. The Conservative Party would split: let us say, the Brexiteers join UKIP and say we are going to maintain our campaign, and leave a pro-EU Conservative party. Similarly you could have Labour sceptics joining an anti-EU conglomeration.
Or pro-Europeans could split if Brexit wins. If there was a showdown between Brexiteers and pro-Europeans in Parliament. So you could have a realignment of the political parties on what is the real faultline in British politics at the moment, which is pro and anti EU. There is more chance than there was.
Brexit could eventually lead to downfall of Western political civilisation, says EU chief
David Cameron and his Remain colleagues have repeatedly been accused of scaremongering. Recession, rising unemployment, rising prices, rising interest rates, falling house prices, further rise of international conflict (although not necessarily “world war three”, which was Boris Johnson’s parody) - there seems to be no end to the list of negative consequences from Brexit that Cameron has been warning people about.
But Donald Tusk, president of the European council, has gone much further. If Britain leaves the EU, that could eventually end up with the downfall of Western civilisation, he says.
He made the comment in an interview with the German newspaper Bild. Some extracts were released yesterday, but the full article became available today.
Reuters has written it up as a story. Here’s the key quote from Tusk.
Why is it so dangerous? Because no one can foresee what the long-term consequences would be. As a historian I fear that Brexit could be the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but also of western political civilization in its entirety.
Updated
In his Today interview Gordon Brown was asked about a new report from the Migration Watch thinktank saying it expects net migration to continue at the rate of more than a quarter of a million a year for the next 20 years.
The full report is here. And here is a summary.
The paper looks ahead over a twenty year period in the event that the UK votes to remain in the EU in the referendum on 23rd June. It points to continued very high levels of net migration. It notes that there is widespread complacency and denial about both the likelihood and the impact of rapid population growth.
Under the low migration scenario, net migration from the EU falls to 135,000 by the end of the period and only a small number of refugees who have already arrived in other parts of the EU relocate to Britain. The government successfully reduces non-EU net migration to 100,000 a year. British emigration remains at 50,000 a year, giving total net migration under this scenario of 205,000 (see Annex A).
Under the high scenario, net migration from the EU rises to 220,000 by 2031. In this scenario, attempts to reduce non-EU migration have failed so it is running at 150,000 per year. British emigration (50,000 net per year) brings total net migration to the UK to 320,000 in 20 years time (see Annex B).
The central estimate represents a cautious approach. It excludes Turkey altogether and takes the average of the high and low migration scenarios. This would see net migration running at 265,000 by 2035 (See Annex D). Net migration at this level is the current ‘high migration’ scenario used by the ONS in the population projections and would take the UK population to 70 million in 2024 and 80 million within thirty years (see Annex E).
Here is an extract.
http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/384
My colleague Jessica Elgot is covering the Labour campaigning in Walsall today, where Angela Eagle, the shadow business secretary, and other leading Labour women are on the stump.
She will be filing more later, but she has posted a picture on Twitter saying that at least in one respect the party is getting what it is asking for.
Labour says 'rain' ? It's coming down now in Walsall pic.twitter.com/q8barQU633
— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) June 13, 2016
The New Statesman’s Stephen Bush has an interesting blog on Gordon Brown’s speech. He says the mood in the Labour camp is grim.
Within the Labour party, the mood is bleak. “We are sleepwalking to losing the damn thing,” lamented one senior source. One frontbencher returned from canvassing and announced to his office: “It’s just like the general election. The polls say it’ll be fine but every doorstep someone tells you to f*** off.”
And he says the problem with Brown’s agenda for EU reform is that it may never happen.
Will it work? That the main event that Brown is using as the centerpiece of his speech is Britain’s EU presidency in 2017 highlights the problem. Although the raft of measures has been signed up to by Corbyn, McDonnell and Labour’s deputy Tom Watson, the reality is that David Cameron has yet to sign up to the agenda, nor could he carry his party if he did.
Regardless of the referendum outcome, the priorities of Britain’s 2017 presidency will be set by Cameron or his Conservative successor. Look at the small print, and what is being offered is an agenda for a EU presidency that will not happen until 2020 at the earliest. (Britain’s 2017 presidency comes at the end of a 12 year wait, so depending on the order chosen, Britain’s next turn could be as far off as 2029.)
This is thin gruel, not red meat, but it’s difficult to see what else there is that Remain could plausibly serve up.
I’m told that Hilary Benn certainly did not intend his line about the BBC to be read as a subtle dig at Jeremy Corbyn. (See 11.45am.)
Boris Johnson says Remain's 'relaunch with Gordon Brown' is a 'measure of desperation'
Boris Johnson is campaigning for Vote Leave in Henley. He told the BBC a few minutes ago that he thought that Remain’s “relaunch with Gordon Brown” was “a measure of desperation”.
I think people are increasingly listening to what we have to say. I must say, I think that the Remain campaign are getting slightly rattled now. If you have a relaunch with Gordon Brown, that’s got to be some measure of desperation in my view.
Hilary Benn's speech - Summary
Here is a summary of the key points in Hilary Benn’s speech. Benn, the shadow foreign secretary, was speaking in Church House in Westminster.
- Benn said leaving the EU would not reduce immigration “significantly”.
Immigration into Britain will continue whether we stay or go, as the Leave campaign have now admitted.
Indeed Nigel Farage’s contradictory promises, as we saw yesterday, simply don’t add up. And anyone who thinks that voting Leave will bring the numbers down significantly will in time be bitterly disappointed.
Free movement is part of the deal and the reason why so many people have come here from other EU countries is because jobs are available. Jobs that need doing and jobs that, if it had not been for this migration, employers would have been shouting about because of the difficulty they were having in filling them. Vacancies for doctors, nurses, lecturers, factory workers, chefs and waiters, receptionists, scientists and cleaners.
- He suggested Britain needed to keep net migration relatively high because of the growing need for carers.
Just reflect for a moment on the greatest social challenge that confronts us; the demographic time bomb that will see the number of people aged 65 and over rise by nearly five million over the next two decades.
Already, one in five of our care workers come from outside the United Kingdom – from Europe and the rest of the world – and we will need more carers as more people need looking after.
When my father came towards the end of his life, most of the people who cared for him with such patience and gentleness had brought their care from abroad to this country.
And in the years ahead, it will be our turn to be looked after.
And as well as providing that care, we will need to pay for it, which is why it is utterly irresponsible to advocate a course of action that will lead to a weaker, less strong and less prosperous economy. This would damage our public services and make it more difficult to deal with, as we must, the pressures that immigration brings.
Benn did not quite say it, but his implied message was: Vote Brexit, but only if you’re willing to provide the care for your ageing parents yourself.
- He implied that if Leave really wanted to cut immigration, they would have to crash the economy.
The question people ask is this. Will we continue to see these levels of immigration? Is there any limit? Well, we can influence the level, but not in the way the Leave campaigners think they can.
The number who come will be determined by the size and strength of our economy and the jobs available.
- He said Britain had always influenced the world by looking outwards.
And we have helped to influence and shape the modern world through the power of our ideas and values. Our system of governance. Parliamentary democracy. The rule of national and international law. A free media. Free trade. And the belief that every human being has rights that are inalienable. Ideas that have been a beacon of inspiration to people who enjoy none of these things.
This did not come about because we turned our backs on working with others. It transpired because we embraced others, travelled, traded, built alliances, were open to new ideas and welcomed new people.
Britain’s story, our unique history as an island nation, has been shaped by how we have always looked beyond our own shores and engaged with the wider world.
- He said Leave’s claim that Brexit would not damage the economy was “dangerously wrong”.
Now that the Leave campaign’s claim that EU membership costs us £350 million a week has been utterly discredited, they seek to argue that there will be no cost to Britain’s economy if we leave.
They are wrong. They are dangerously wrong. They are playing fast and loose with people’s jobs, their livelihoods and their families’ incomes as they try to lure us onto the rocks.
- He said leaving the EU would not enhance sovereignty.
The truth is that pulling up the drawbridge and quitting the EU will not enhance our national sovereignty.
All it would do is to weaken it by taking away our power to influence events in an ever more complex and interdependent world. It would hinder us from responding to the changes and the challenges that this century will present us with.
What is the point of absolute sovereignty if you cannot exercise it to achieve what you want? It is a phantom form of sovereignty. An imaginary wall made not of bricks and mortar, but of smoke and mirrors. Smoke that will dissipate the moment it comes into contact with events.
- He praised the BBC. Listing many things that made Britain great, he said:
British broadcasters are respected in all four corners of the globe for their impartial reporting.
This seemed to be a subtle dig at Jeremy Corbyn, who has recently accused the BBC of bias.
UPDATE: I’m told that Benn certainly did not intend this line to be interpreted in this way.
- He said leaving the EU would be bad for the young.
The world I was born into in 1953 - the year of the Queen’s coronation - had a population of 2.7 billion people. Today there are 7.5 billion of us. By the time my grandchildren reach my age, they will be sharing this small and fragile planet of ours with 10 billion men, women and children.
Will walking away from Europe really give them greater control over the world they will be living in? Will it make their future better? Will it help them to manage the changes that they will inevitably see in their lives just as we have seen great changes in ours? Will it help them to make the most of the opportunities that lie ahead in this century?
In our hearts, we know that the answer to all these questions is no.
Alan Johnson, the chair of Labour In for Britain, said it was probably the most powerful pro-EU speech he had heard.
Alan Johnson - Hilary Benn's speech is "probably the most powerful and cogent case for Remain I've heard, and believe me I've heard a lot."
— Henry Mance (@henrymance) June 13, 2016
Updated
Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary, has delivered a speech on the EU.
10 days to honour the vision, courage & determination of those who brought peace to our continent- @hilarybennmp pic.twitter.com/YIXtup36UI
— LabourInForBritain (@UKLabourIN) June 13, 2016
I’ll post a summary shortly.
As Claire said earlier, the Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie, who chairs the Commons Treasury committee, has used an article in the Times (paywall) to announce that he will be voting Remain.
Here’s another extract.
Brexit could well leave the country poorer. But its supporters argue that, by retaking Westminster control over decisions now made at EU level, the country would have more self-confidence. In the words of Arron Banks, the founder of Leave.eu, it is a “price worth paying”.
My own view is that much of the control that might come, post-Brexit, would be illusory. Britain would still need to negotiate with the EU in pursuit of the national interest, whether in or out. It’s called international relations. From outside, the UK would lose influence over decisions that nonetheless profoundly affect the economy.
Those who claim that this influence is illusory need to explain the UK’s exemption from the eurozone, Schengen, the migrant quota system, banking union, among much else. The UK cannot dictate. And the EU can be a very frustrating place to do business. But Britain’s influence is certainly not negligible ...
Perhaps the leavers have the simplest points. But the remainers have the better of the arguments.
My vote will be to remain.
That prompted the pro-Brexit Tory MP Nadine Dorries to post a message on Twitter showing the charm, grace and wisdom for which she is well known.
She has since deleted her tweet.
Oh gawd, I've just been told sock sniffing is actually a sexual fettish! I didn't mean that in any way whatsoever so, deleting that tweet.
— Nadine Dorries (@NadineDorriesMP) June 13, 2016
Wes Streeting, a Labour MP who sits on the Treasury committee, has criticised her.
@NadineDorriesMP Cheap shot, Nadine. You know Andrew Tyrie is fiercely independent. Has it crossed your mind he just doesn't agree with you?
— Wes Streeting MP (@wesstreeting) June 13, 2016
In his Today interview Gordon Brown was talking about a document he is publishing today setting out his reform agenda for the EU. It’s only three pages long. You can read it here (pdf).
Pound and shares hit by Brexit fears
Growing concern that the UK may vote to leave the EU seems to have affecting the markets this morning.
Share prices are down, and sterling is down too. And the cost of insuring against sterling falling in value against the euro has reached a record high.
My colleague Graeme Wearden has a lot more detail on the business blog.
And this is from the BBC’s Kamal Ahmed.
Markets "wake up" to chance of UK exit, sterling under pressure https://t.co/O9AZtCVA7e via @BBCNews
— Kamal Ahmed (@bbckamal) June 13, 2016
Fox says personal 'blue on blue' attacks will leave 'scars' that last well beyond referendum
Liam Fox, the pro-Brexit Conservative former defence secretary, was on the Today programme earlier. He said that he thought some of the “blue on blue” attacks in the campaign had gone too far.
It’s fair enough in the referendum that we probe one another’s views, we can say ‘you don’t understand the argument’, we can say ‘you’ve got your facts wrong’.
What I think it unacceptable is for people to impugn the motives or the integrity or the honesty of their colleagues. I think that has happened and I think it’s very unfortunate, because these scars last well beyond the referendum date itself.
His comment seemed to be directed at what Amber Rudd, the energy secretary, said about Boris Johnson in last week’s ITV debate, although it applies equally well to some of the things Leave have been saying about David Cameron.
And this is what some of Gordon Brown’s political opponents are saying about his interview on Twitter.
From the Ukip MEP Patrick O’Flynn
Astonishing that GordonBrown seeks to marginalise impact of EU migration. Wonder what working class voters can do to teach him a lesson...?
— Patrick O'Flynn (@oflynnmep) June 13, 2016
From the SNP MP John Nicolson
Always mystified when people laud Gordon Brown's debating prowess. A tetchy, clunky performance re #Brexit just now on @BBCr4today
— JOHN NICOLSON M.P. (@MrJohnNicolson) June 13, 2016
From the Conservative MP Jesse Norman
Amazing how devious and hectoring Gordon Brown was on @BBCr4today. Deja vu all over again. Awful.
— Jesse Norman (@Jesse_Norman) June 13, 2016
And here is some Twitter comment from journalists on the Gordon Brown interview.
From the Sun’s Steve Hawkes
Gordon Brown passionate about EU on BBC Today but I can't see how any of this message addresses fears of Labour voters wanting 'Out'
— steve hawkes (@steve_hawkes) June 13, 2016
Gordon Brown dodging questions about Labour's woeful record on immigration by saying they kept lid on Romanians and Bulgarians..
— steve hawkes (@steve_hawkes) June 13, 2016
From PoliticalHome’s Kevin Schofield
On the up side for Remain, maybe no Labour voters were listening to the Today programme when Gordon Brown was on.
— Kevin Schofield (@PolhomeEditor) June 13, 2016
From LBC’s Julia Hartley-Brewer
If Remain think Gordon Brown is their saviour, they are utterly deluded. His @BBCRadio4 #Today prog interview was a total car crash
— Julia Hartley-Brewer (@JuliaHB1) June 13, 2016
From Newsweek’s Josh Lowe
Interesting moment on #r4today as New Labour and Corbynism meet on the benefits of immigration. Brown launching a stormy defence.
— Josh Lowe (@JeyyLowe) June 13, 2016
Blimey, Brown also talks about the "BBC's agenda" on immigration. Maybe he's gone full Corbyn #r4today
— Josh Lowe (@JeyyLowe) June 13, 2016
From Newsnight’s Nicholas Watt
Gordon Brown tells @BBCr4today UK needs to be at EU negotiating table. Same Gordon Brown who missed Lisbon treaty signing ceremony? 1/2
— Nicholas Watt (@nicholaswatt) June 13, 2016
In making case for EU Gordon Brown appears to be glossing over British jobs for British workers pledge in 1st @UKLabour ldr conf speech 2/2
— Nicholas Watt (@nicholaswatt) June 13, 2016
From the Telegraph’s Matthew Holehouse
Gordon Brown was meant to be in Brussels with Juncker today. Cancelled, catching hosts off guard. Remain camp panic?
— Matthew Holehouse (@mattholehouse) June 13, 2016
Brown says illegal immigration a more serious problem than EU immigration
Here are the main points from Gordon Brown’s interview.
- Brown said illegal immigration was a more serious problem than immigration from the EU. He played down the seriousness of EU immigration as a issue, although he did say that he thought it was important to help communities affected by high immigration levels. The EU and the UK government should be contributing money to help these areas, he said. But he insisted that it was important to keep the issue in perspective.
Norway, outside the European Union, has a higher rate of migration. Switzerland, outside the EU, has a higher rate of migration. If you look at the actual figures themselves, then 500,000 of the people you classify as Europeans coming into Britain are Irish citizens. Nobody wants to exclude the Irish citizens from Great Britain.
The real problem we are dealing with, and the biggest problem, is illegal immigration. When you saw these Albanians coming into the country, that wasn’t Europeans trying to get in by right. That was illegal immigrants driven by gang masters, driven by traffickers, criminal gangs. The only way to deal with that, which is a cross-border problem of law and order, is by cooperation across the authorities ...
That is the heart of the future problem. If you talk to an American, if you talk to an Indian, if you talk to people in Europe - it is illegal immigration that is the problem that they are most worried about.
- He accused the BBC of having an “agenda” when John Humphrys kept asking about immigration. Brown appeared to object, suggested that he had not expected the interview to focus just on this topic. “That’s the BBC’s agenda,” he said. He protested after Humphrys mentioned his exchange with Gillian Duffy, the voter he accused of being a bigot after she complained about Eastern European immigrants, in the 2010 election campaign. But Brown also told Humphrys that he was happy to answer questions about immigration.
- He dismissed the Migration Watch forecast out today for net migration over the next 20 years. Asked about their numbers, he replied:
C’mon John, anybody can produce figures 20 years from now. You’ve got to look at the real world as we are now.
Asked what he thought would happen to migration in the future, he said that there is managed migration in the UK and that the biggest problem in the future would be illegal immigration.
- He said that figures from all wings of the Labour party backed his call for European reform. Labour voters do not want the status quo, he said. He said figures like Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Tom Watson and Lord Mandelson backed the ideas he was putting forward.
When all the forces of Labour get together, it’s a very powerful voice in the country.
Updated
Q: You remember Mrs Duffy ...
Brown says he did not expect to have an interview all about immigration. But that is the BBC’s agenda, he says. He says he is happy to answer questions.
Q: Let us put aside illegal immigration.
No, says Brown. Illegal immigration is the problem for countries in Europe and for America. No one who looks at this is in any doubt that you need systematic cooperation across Europe.
Q: Labour is not getting its message across. To what extent is that Jeremy Corbyn’s fault? Corbyn said, when asked how enthusiastic he was about the EU out of 10, about seven.
Brown says that was on a comedy programme.
Q: So why was he on a comedy programme?
Brown says life must go on. He says he is watching the European championships, as well as campaigning.
He says when all the Labour voices get together, they can make a powerful impact.
And that’s it. The interview is over. I will post a summary soon.
Q: Your government’s record on people coming from accession countries was sensationally wrong.
Brown asks who many people came from Romania and Bugaria in 2007-08. It was 32,000. And in 2008-09? It was 28,000.
Q: What about the projected figures over the next 20 years. Migration Watch have produced figures today.
Brown says anyone can produce figures going over the next 20 years.
Q: It is not just them. Oxford University’s centre for migration studies says something similar.
Brown says we do not have uncontrolled immigration. We have managed immigration.
Q: John McDonnell says there is nothing wrong with immigration.
Brown says we need migration.
Migrants work in places like the NHS.
And, for non-EU migration, we have a system similar to the Australian one.
Gordon Brown's Today interview
John Humphrys is interviewing Gordon Brown.
Q: You are talking about Britain leading, not leaving the EU. But people will be sceptical. In many areas we are not leading.
Brown says Britain led in encouraging expansion into eastern Europe, and has led in many areas. He says he talks to European leaders all the time. They want Britain to lead. We should be leading in areas like energy, action against tax havens, and action against terrorism.
Q: But our influence has been mimimal.
Brown says he does not accept that. In the financial crisis Britain led in Europe, and Europe led in the world. And the same was true in the Paris climate change talks.
He says Labour voters do not want the status quo. They want to be better off.
Q: Labour voters do not like immigration.
Brown says he is publishing a document that says communities need help to deal with the impact of immigration. The EU should help with that. This could be done tomorrow. And Norway has a higher rate of immigration. And the immigration figures include Irish immigrants. No one wants to exclude the Irish.
The biggest problem is illegal immigration, he says. And you can only deal with that through cooperation. That is what people want.
Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, taking over from Claire.
Gordon Brown is about to be interviewed on the Today programme.
He is giving a speech later setting out his agenda for EU reform. It is a plan he has already set out before, and there is a full summary here.
Matthew D’Ancona, in the Guardian today, says remain v leave is not “a case of moral equivalence”:
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the remain camp has been exaggerating the risks of Brexit. It is certainly guilty of presenting as exact data what can only be informed estimates. But these are peccadilloes compared with leave’s deployment of immigration as its core theme …
There is much that is deeply objectionable about this. But the least edifying feature of it all is the spectacle of intellectually brilliant politicians pretending that profoundly complex policy problems are, in fact, easily solved. Vote for Brexit, heat the stove to No 10, add political will in quantity – et voilà! All your immigration problems fixed.
Here’s a Press Association report on a Tory donor, Edi Truell, who has said he will stop funding the party – until Boris Johnson or Michael Gove take over at the top, that is:
In an attack on David Cameron, Edi Truell said he was “not prepared to support the current regime” because of the way the prime minister had handled the referendum campaign.
Truell, a Leave supporter, has donated more than £270,000 to the Tories since 2010 but has written to Conservative chairman Lord Feldman to say he would no longer give the party money.
But the City financier said he would be pleased to back former London mayor Johnson, justice secretary Gove and “the genuine Conservative party” in future.
Warning that other donors were also reconsidering their backing, he told the Telegraph: “I’m not prepared to support the current regime given the way they have been going about things.”
But he praised the Tory leaders of the Leave campaign: “I think Boris, Michael Gove and team have done a sterling job, a brave job, and I would be only too pleased to support them and, in my view, the genuine Conservative Party in the future.”
Truell said the prime minister’s warning about the damage a Brexit vote could do to retirement savings was the final straw in a pattern of “unfair” and “irresponsible” claims.
He said he was “staggered” by the claims about the financial risks of Brexit made by Cameron and chancellor George Osborne, claiming the numbers were “fantasy”.
Truell warned that the real risk to pensions came from remaining in the EU because of legislation being drawn up in Brussels.
“The much greater risk is remaining within the EU – they’ve got explicit plans to destroy British pensions,” he said.
“All the final-salary funds will go bankrupt, and their companies will go bankrupt supporting them. That’s about 8,000 pension funds in the private sector.”
Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie, who chairs the Treasury select committee, has written in the Times today about his decision to back remain – and his criticism of the “absurd claims and distortions of the truth” that have been a feature of the campaign.
Tyrie writes:
As the Treasury committee discovered in hearings, some of these claims are at best over-simplified. At their worst, they are falsehoods.
The claim – placed by Vote Leave at the heart of their campaign – that Brexit would bring a £350m per week fiscal “windfall” for the NHS is the most disgraceful.
On the key battleground issue of the economy, he says:
The Treasury committee looked in detail at the economic impact of Brexit. The evidence suggested that a vote to leave would probably bring a short-term shock, reducing economic activity, and with it, a lowering of living standards.
Over the longer term, the picture is less clear. But the balance of the committee’s evidence strongly suggests that the downside risks from diminished access to the single market would outweigh any upside opportunities from trade with the rest of the world for an extended period.
Sky News political editor Faisal Islam says Tyrie’s backing is a “coup for remain”:
Coup for Remain: Tyrie had criticised PM renegotiation, chaired most intensive examination of all sides claims: https://t.co/fbrRRCpnl9
— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) June 13, 2016
Asian stocks have taken their largest tumble in more than two months amid growing fears that Britain could vote to leave the EU, Martin Farrer reports:
The pound also suffered when trading opened after a weekend of contrasting polls about the possibility of a UK vote to leave the EU. Sterling fell to as low as $1.4159 in early Asian trade, its weakest since 18 April.
Sapping confidence further over recent days has been a steady drip of economic data that has highlighted an underpowered world economy despite years of massive intervention by central banks around the world.
The US Federal Reserve, Bank of England, Swiss National Bank and the Bank of Japan all meet this week. All are expected to hold monetary policy steady against a backdrop of caution heightened by the global impact from a possible Brexit.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 1.6%, its biggest daily fall since 5 April. It has fallen 3.4% in the last two sessions.
Japanese stocks led regional losses with the benchmark index falling 3% in choppy trade.
Markets in Europe were set to open sharply down according to futures trading.
Morning briefing
Good morning and welcome to our daily EU referendum coverage, with 10 days to go until campaigning stops and vote-counting starts.
I’m kicking things off with the morning briefing to set you up for the day ahead and steering the live blog until Andrew Sparrow takes his seat. Do come and chat in the comments below or find me on Twitter @Claire_Phipps.
The big picture
Labour leads the charge today – albeit, as political editor Heather Stewart reports, “carefully choreographed with No 10” – with a speech by Gordon Brown the centrepiece of remain’s push to win over voters in the final 10 days of the campaign.
The Times reports that Jeremy Corbyn will head what it labels an “all-out blitz for the remain camp” this week amid fears that Labour voters are “haemorrhaging” to the leave side.
Expect David Cameron to take a back seat as Labour MPs politely – or not so politely – distance themselves from the government-fronted campaign in order to make the Labour case for In.
Expect, too, a shift in tone: out goes talk of the risks and horrors of a post-Brexit UK; in come unity and positivity.
Brown will say:
From now until 10pm on 23 June, we will not rest and I will not stop explaining why 9 million Labour voters have most to gain from remaining in the EU.
And while we’re on the subject of unity and positivity … Shadow chancellor John McDonnell says:
These proposals from Gordon Brown are welcome and are part of the positive Labour case that I and others are making to vote to remain and reform the EU.
On ITV’s Peston on Sunday, McDonnell acknowledged that many voters have been put off by the tone of the campaign so far:
I’m where most people are at at the moment in terms of I’m fed up of project fear on both sides. I think what’s been happening is there have been exaggerated claims on both sides and that’s turned people off.
But Labour MP and Vote Leave campaigner Gisela Stuart said voters would be equally turned off by the new approach:
Labour voters have seen through the spin of the government, which is why they are rejecting the In campaign, and no amount of hastily cobbled together relaunches will change that.
Meanwhile, leave campaigner and Conservative minister Priti Patel takes on the Brexiteers’ new favoured theme: a potential Turkish accession to the EU. (The “fury” over the “plot” to enable visa-free travel for “1.5 million Turks” knocked the Orlando massacre off the Daily Mail front page.) Patel said:
Turkish membership would mean an additional 100,000 people coming to the UK every year – enough, on its own, to break David Cameron’s manifesto pledge to reduce migration to the tens of thousands.
In an interview with German daily Bild, published in full today, European council president Donald Tusk warns that efforts to extricate the UK from the EU could take many years:
Every single one of the 27 member states as well as the European parliament would have to approve the overall result. That would take at least five years, and I’m afraid, without any guarantee of success.
And your speedy weekend round-up:
- David Cameron says state pensions could be at risk if Brexit becomes reality.
- Full Cameron interview: ‘Leave want to take the country backwards’.
- Cameron defends EU campaign in face of Nigel Farage attacks.
- Third of voters won’t make up their minds until week before poll.
- Leave campaigners accuse prime minister of abusing honours system.
- BT’s chairman and chief executive, along with the leaders of the CWU and Prospect unions, have written to the firm’s 81,400 staff to say they think Britain should stay in the EU – but the letter doesn’t explicitly ask them to vote for remain.
Poll position
A YouGov poll for the Adam Smith Institute says 57% of those polled say they would favour the UK moving to a “Norway-style” relationship with the EU in the event of a Brexit vote.
Sam Bowman, executive director of the Adam Smith Institute, said:
This would mean keeping free moment of people in exchange for remaining in the single market, and would be a safe way to leave the EU that would avoid major economic risks or disruption.
If Britain did vote to leave the EU, the poll finds, 73% of remain voters think the first priority for the government should be “ensuring free trade with the rest of the European Union”. For leave voters, the key issue is immigration, with 73% saying “reducing the amount of EU immigration into Britain” would be top of the government’s to-do list.
And the Daily Express has exclusive news of a poll giving leave a 19-point lead:
The Opinium poll, commissioned by the Brexit-backing Bruges Group thinktank, is further evidence that the Leave camp is gaining support and delivers the biggest margin of victory for Brexit so far, after giving voters the option of a choice of free trade agreements with the EU.
Anyway … just leaving this here: How accurate are the Brexit polls?
Diary
- Shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn kicks off Labour day with a speech at 10am.
- At 11am, shadow business secretary Angela Eagle and shadow defence secretary Emily Thornberry are in Birmingham to speak to female voters.
- Gordon Brown’s speech is at 3pm in Leicester.
Read these
Doreen Lawrence, writing in the New Statesman, tackles the Brexiteers’ claim that they want to “take back control” from the EU:
My experience as a peer has taught me to be sceptical when politicians complain that they do not always get their way. I have little sympathy when ministers moan that the EU interferes with their plans and frustrates their ambitions. Governments need restraints, and the framework of EU laws is one of the best protections we have against the whims of ministers, whether they be Conservatives or any other party …
The Leave campaign has tried to pitch this debate as being about the people against the establishment. Nothing could be further from the truth. Europe is not an elite conspiracy against the public: at its best, it is the opposite. It is about the solidarity of the peoples of Europe with each other and our determination to create a better, freer and fairer world. It establishes a framework where citizens are protected from the state by common rules and standards.
Trevor Kavanagh in the Sun says the the EU is beginning to fear that it cannot survive without the UK:
If Europe is the future, where are its life-changing equivalents of Apple, Microsoft, Netflix and Amazon? Where is its Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Elon Musk?
While the iPhone alone has lifted millions out of poverty, the EU destroys subsistence farmers by dumping surpluses. Silicon Valley has created more global growth, communications and commerce than the entire continent of Europe.
And for something a little different: Brexit and chill – the referendum in cartoons.
Baffling claim of the day
The Telegraph wonders if the Queen was giving a coded warning about the perils of Brexit in an address yesterday in which she mentioned “the “many benefits that can flow when people come together for a common purpose – as family, friends or neighbours”. What can it all mean, the Telegraph?
It is hard not see those words in the context of the EU referendum next week, though it is also easy to see how any such connotation can be denied. Ambiguity is all.
But we too often forget that the Queen is not a celebrity; she is the head of state and may well have been sending a subliminal message about her own – or her government’s – preference for the outcome of June 23.
Celebrity endorsement of the day
I couldn’t bring myself to plonk the Queen in this category – as the Telegraph sagely opined, she is not a celebrity – so it’ll have to be John Cleese, who has declared himself for Brexit:
If I thought there was any chance of major reform in the EU, I’d vote to stay in. But there isn’t. Sad.
I feel terrible about being lined up with thugs like Murdoch and Dacre and Brooks,but I do think Stiglitz and Owen have got it right...
— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) June 12, 2016
The day in a tweet
This letter heading in the South China Morning Post suggests there is still some work to do in the last days of campaigning (the letter-writer says EU, by the way, so in this instance we really must blame the journalists):
SCMP typo du jour, letters page. (Or maybe writer really believes UK would be worse without English, Scots, Welsh.) pic.twitter.com/tkNAiCwLnL
— HK Hemlock (@HKBigLychee) June 13, 2016
If today were a 90s classic indie album ...
It would be Catatonia’s Way Beyond Blue. For the Tories taking a back seat, rather than the feelings of stupor.
And another thing
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