David Cameron's "town hall" with BuzzFeed/Facebook - Summary
Here are the main points from David Cameron’s Q&A with BuzzFeed/Facebook. There were not any big news lines, but it was a good event. The audience asked sharp, tough questions, but with much less of the grandstanding you sometimes get from people in studio audiences who know they have a chance of becoming famous for five minutes on TV.
- Cameron condoned the attacks directed at Boris Johnson in the ITV debate last night. Johnson was criticised personally by all three Remain speakers, including Amber Rudd, his fellow Conservative and energy secretary. Asked about the insults, and whether he felt sorry for Johnson, Cameron said:
I’ve done these debates. They are lively affairs and that’s the way it is. I’m going to spend all my time, if I can, in the next 13 days on the arguments.
- He said he would not debate Johnson himself because he did not want the referendum to become the “Dave versus Boris show”. Asked why he would not debate the former London mayor, he said:
My team, on this question, it’s not just the Conservative government. It’s the Labour party, the Greens, the Lib Dems - I want to demonstrate the breadth of the coalition behind staying in. I don’t want this to look like the Dave versus Boris show, because that’s not actually what it is.
He also said he liked doing “town hall” events like this one
- He signalled that he would offer Johnson a cabinet job after the referendum. Asked about a post-referendum reshuffle, he said:
I have always said, without giving too much away, I’m a believe in having all your stars on the pitch. Boris Johnson is a very significant figure in the Conservative party. He was a very effective mayor of London.
- He urged people to ignore the polls.
In the election an awful lot of the commentary seemed to be determined by what the polls seemed to be saying. I think we should just forget about the polls. There is going to be a poll in 13 days’ time.
- He was confronted by a young woman in the audience who told him: “I hate the Tories, you fucked every fucking thing up in this country.” But she is voting Remain, and she laughed when he said one good thing about the campaign was that it was bringing people together who never normally agree.
- He said he thought the referendum was “very competitive” and that many people had yet to make up their minds. Asked if he could lose, he said:
I think it’s very competitive out there. You go round meeting people ... it’s a huge debate, a lot of people still making up their mind. And here’s the difference with a general election. In a general election, when people say to you I haven’t decided, that normally means they are being polite but they are definitely not voting for you. With this, I actually think people really haven;t decided.
- He said he expected MPs to accept the result of the referendum. Asked about newspaper claims that some MPs may try to frustrate the will of the electorate if Leave win, he replied
I think that is completely unrealistic. If the British public say we stay in, we stay in. If the British public say we get out, we get out. I think parliament must respect and would respect the will of the British people.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Cameron has finished. They are now giving him his score. Online, he gets 42% approval, and 58% disapproval. Amongst the audience he gets 58% approval, and 42% disapproval.
Cameron says he does not accept the idea that his campaign is “Project Fear”.
If he told people to ignore the views of the governor of the Bank of England, he would be being irresponsible.
He says Leave just shout “Project Fear” when concerns are raised.
Cameron is winding up now.
He says people should use the referendum to reject Nigel Farage’s view of Britain.
Q: If there is a Brexit, will you have Boris Johnson in your cabinet?
Cameron says he wants to bring people together after the referendum. He says he wants his strongest players in the team. Johnson was a good mayor.
Q; Do you stay up at night worrying about this?
Cameron says he is very concerned about this, because it is more important than an election.
Q: Could you lose?
Cameron says there is nothing to compare it with. It is “very competitive” out there.
In an election, when people say they are undecided, that normally means they won’t vote for you. But in this contest people are genuinely undecided.
Cameron condones ITV debate attacks on Johnson, saying debates “get lively”
Q: How is the Conservative party going to come back together after this?
Camerons says it has been a passionate debate. But they all agree that it is right to hold a referendum, and to obey the instructions afterwards.
He thinks that will happen, he says.
Q: Some MPs have said if there is a vote to leave, they will try to block that.
Cameron says he does not accept that. Parliament should and would accept the will of the people.
Q: How do you feel about the insults directed at Boris Johnson?
I’ve done these debates. They are lively affairs and that’s the way it is. I’m going to spend all my time, if I can, in the next 13 days on the arguments.
- Cameron condones ITV debate attacks on Boris Johnson, saying debates “get lively”.
Q: Why won’t you debate Johnson?
Cameron says he does not want this to be the Dave v Boris show.
And he likes doing town hall meetings like this, engaging with people directly.
Updated
Q: This government discriminates against non-EU migrants.
Cameron says he does not accept that.
Q: Given we have been members of the EU for 40 years, why is there so little affection for it?
Cameron says our history is different. We have never been invaded. People have a practical view of it, not a national view.
Other Europeans have a more emotional view of it, because they have had a history of invasion.
He says, as Churchill says, we may not be of Europe but we are with Europe.
Q: I’m an Indian national working in the NHS. I have to spent a lot of money in visas fees proving I can be here. Yet EU citizens can come in without proving anything. That makes me feel I am not valued.
Cameron says the single market means Britons can go and work in the EU, as well as enabling EU citizens to come here. The rules are different, he accepts. But he says having a single market is good for Britain and British people.
Q: How would an increase in the minimum wage increase immigration?
Cameron says increasing the minimum wage is a good thing to do. He says there are good ways to control immigration and bad ways. Over the last five years the UK created more jobs than the rest of the EU. But those EU economies are now growing.
Cameron says trade negotiations are not a love-in. We don’t sell any beef to the US, he says.
A young woman says she is voting Remain, even though she hates the Tories because they have “fucked everything up”, and “screwed the disabled, screwed the vulnerable”. She calls the prime minister “dodgy Dave”.
Cameron smiles. He says the nice thing about this referendum is that it is bringing people together who would never normally agree. The woman sees the funny side.
Updated
Q: How do you intend to tackle with immigration?
Cameron says people coming to the UK have to look for a job. If they can’t get a job, they have to go home. And if they stay, they don’t get full benefits for four years.
Cameron acknowledges that the UK buys more for the EU than it sells to it.
But 44% of our goods go to Europe, he says. Only 8% of their goods come here.
And although there is a deficit in goods, there is a surplus in services.
Q: You said you would cut immigration. And you said you would contemplate leaving the EU. Why should we listen to you now.
Cameron says he never wanted to leave the EU.
If he wanted an easier life, he would say the EU decision was a balanced one, but that he only just favoured staying.
But he does not think it is a balanced argument. He is arguing strongly for staying in because the case is so strong.
Cameron says if the UK is outside the single markets, tariffs will be imposed if it sells cars to Germany.
Q: If the case for staying in is so strong, why are the polls so close?
Cameron says people should ignore the polls. In the 2015 election people saw how focusing on the polls during the campaign gave a false impression.
David Cameron at BuzzFeed
Q: If leaving the EU is going to be so bad, why did you give the people a vote?
David Cameron says it’s because he’s a democrat. He thought the people should decide.
Farage says Ukip not racist, but wrongly 'demonised by establishment' for its EU stance
Here is the line from Nigel Farage where he claimed that Ukip had never been racist or homophobic, but that it had been “demonised” by the media because it was defying conventional wisdom. Farage said:
When I first appeared on Question Time on the BBC back in 2000 I was the first person in 20 years on Question Time that had said I thought we should leave the European Union. So what I am guilty of is making Europe a big issue in British politics, and I’m guilty of forcing Mr Cameron into holding this referendum.
In life, if you challenge the establishment, whether it’s in business, whether it’s in science, whether it’s in politics, if you take on a consensus view, they will abuse you. And what happened to me in 2014 was our party started to rise in the polls, and the establishment got terrified. ‘Crikey, these awful Ukip people might win the European elections.’ There was a quite deliberate attempt to paint our Euroscepticism, me and my supporters, as being racist, homophobic, anti-foreigner - none of it, absolutely none of it, was ever true ...
We’ve been demonised by a media, by an establishment, scared of a different argument.
When it was put to him that there was a long list of Ukip members who have said unacceptable things, he said these were people who had gone online after having “one too many” in the pub.
We had Ukip people who, coming back from the pub, after one too many, said stupid or at times abusive or abrasive things. At the same over 200 councillors from the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats were actually arrested or imprisoned for crimines including rape, paedophilia, even planting bombs in North Wales.
Farage also claimed that Ukip’s record on dealing with problems like antisemitism was better than Labour’s.
Updated
Farage has finished.
The online response was 70% liking him, 25% not liking him. But in the studio only 45% of the audience liked him, and 55% did not like him.
Q: If it is a vote to remain, will you quit politics?
Farage says he will go out and get hammered, and then think about it the following day.
A member of the audience wearing a headscarf says she never expected to agree with a word he said, but thinks he has been giving straight answers to questions. But, with regard to sex attacks, it is not just an issue to do with immigrants, she says.
Farage says he wants a points-based immigration system.
Q: Can you explain your Sunday Telegraph comments about Cologne-style sex attacks?
Farage says he was asked if this could be the nuclear bomb in the campaign. He said it could be. That was it.
Q: How do you feel to have lost the title for running the most xenophobic campaign to Zac Goldsmith?
Farage says he has been demonised. He has never been a racist or xenophobic.
Q: Do you think Goldsmith’s campaign was racist?
Farage says he did not think it was the best campaign he could have run.
Farage says he went to the European parliament thinking the UK was “a square peg in a round hole”. He was happy to accept the EU, if other European countries wanted that, as long as the EU was not involved.
But the votes on the European constitution showed how the EU was willing to override the will of the people. At that point he decided the whole project was flawed.
Q: Would you push for a second referendum if Remain win narrowly?
Farage says it was hard enough to get the first one.
He says many people in the Tory party will be irreconcilable if there is a Remain vote.
But Farage says he thinks parliament would not vote for a second referendum.
He says what Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP, said on the Today programme this week about MPs trying to ignore the results of the referendum (by using the withdrawal legislation to keep the UK in the single market) would be outrageous.
He says the Labour vote is key to the result of the referendum.
Q: How will we ensure women’s rights are protected if we leave?
Farage says he hears these arguments. But trust Britons a bit more. We do not need to be given rights by Brussels. The first parliamentary Act on women’s rights was passed in 1911. And the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1970.
The UK has led the way on rights, he says. We are the country that believes in innocent until proven guilty, habeas corpus and trial by jury.
Q: You raised concerns about attacks on women.
I didn’t, says Farage.
Q: You did.
Farage says people should not just read the headline above his interview. This is an issue in some European countries.
UPDATE: This is from Britain Stronger in Europe.
But @Nigel_Farage you have previously suggested you and @vote_leave will get rid of worker's rights #StrongerIn #BFtownhall
— Stronger In Press (@StrongerInPress) June 10, 2016
Updated
Farage says politicians talk about the single market as if it is a good thing. In fact, it is a “big cartel that suits multinationals”.
He says it is wrong to think the UK has big influence in the UK. Since 2010, there have been 40 occasions when Britain has lost in the council of ministers.
Q: If we leave the EU, how will students be able to go and study abroad?
Farage says Europe now seems a bit dull to students.
He says he hopes Brexit will lead to Denmark leaving the EU, Austria leaving the EU, Sweden leaving the EU, and eventually just a Europe of nation states.
Farage says the behaviour of universities in the referendum campaign has been “deplorable”. There are over 200 Monnet chairs. That means they get money from the EU.
He says we should be encouraging as many foreign students as possible to come to the UK to study here.
Q: How would we make up the deficit of key workers, especially in the NHS?
Farage says it is shameful that two thirds of people who want to train as nurser are turned away.
And then we should have work permits for foreigners coming here to work, as 200 other countries in the world do.
Farage says he wants to have a united country where race and religion is deemed irrelevant.
Q: You should come to Brighton. People are integrated.
Farage says it is different in places like Oldham or Peterborough, which are not integrated.
Q: What is the plan if we leave?
Farage says the plan is simple. We vote to leave and get rid of “dishonest Dave”. We need a Brexit prime minister. Then we go to Brussels and negotiate a “sensible, amicable divorce”. Even if we don’t get a trade deal, it will still be better than what we have.
And if people don’t like the government, they can vote to change it.
Q: People have been kicked out of your party for saying racist things. Don’t say it is just people coming back from the party after one too many drinks.
Farage says people who have said racist or anti-semitic things have been kicked out. In Labour people get re-admitted.
Nigel Farage at BuzzFeed
Nigel Farage is taking part in the BuzzFeed event now.
He says there is a simple choice: do we want to run our own affairs or not. He says got the big M - momentum.
Q: I am embarrassed to tell people I am voting Leave, because people think you are a racist. Are you to blame for that?
Farage says he is guilty of making this an issue. When he went on Question Time in 2000, he was the first person in 20 years on that programme to say Britain should leave the EU.
He says in any walk of life, if you take on the establishment, people will abuse you. In 2014, when his party started to rise in the poll, there was an attempt to depict them as racist. None of that was true.
The party has been demonised.
Q: There is a long record of Ukip people saying abusive things.
Farage says in 20014, there were cases of Ukip people coming home from the pub and posting abusive things online. Over the same period there were 200 people from other parties found guilty of serious crimes.
According to the Sun, the Tory MP Bernard Jenkin has written to David Cameron saying that he is appalled that Cameron allowed Amber Rudd, the energy secretary, to attack Boris Johnson in the way that she did in last night’s debate. It is taken for granted that she would not have said what she did if it had not been approved by Cameron and George Osborne. (ConservativeHome’s Paul Goodman says today: “The voice was the voice of the climate change secretary. But the hands looked like those of friends of the chancellor.”)
Jenkin told the Sun:
This was a sanctioned, personal vilification supported by the prime minister. I am absolutely appalled.
There have been one or two silly things said by both sides in this campaign.
But it’s absolutely suicidal for the party to behave like this, for the leader of our party to behave like this. It is not what most Conservatives are.
And here are some of the highlights from Nicola Sturgeon’s appearance at the BuzzFeed town hall event. At the end she had 61% of the studio audience liking her, and 36% opposed. Online she had a 71% approval rate, with 29% disapproving.
"I don't like negative campaigning," Sturgeon says on accusations of Project Fear, adding: "I don't think it treats people with respect."
— Siraj Datoo (@dats) June 10, 2016
"Don't take the decision about the future of the UK on a grievance or your thoughts about the SNP or me," replies Sturgeon.
— Jamie Ross (@JamieRoss7) June 10, 2016
Nicola Sturgeon says it's "possible" that Scotland could keep England inside the EU against it's will.
— Jamie Ross (@JamieRoss7) June 10, 2016
"I'm not going to stand here and start to criticise other politicians," says Sturgeon after being asked if Cameron is mishandling Remain.
— Jamie Ross (@JamieRoss7) June 10, 2016
Invited to describe herself as a "unionist" in the EU referendum, Nicola Sturgeon instead plumps for "Europhile"... pic.twitter.com/KnpsPirIjX
— Philip Sim (@BBCPhilipSim) June 10, 2016
"If there's a Leave vote we would not automatically get more powers in the Scottish parliament," says Sturgeon.
— Jamie Ross (@JamieRoss7) June 10, 2016
Sturgeon asked if she'll be supporting England at the Euros? "I hope all the home nations will do really well." ⚽️ pic.twitter.com/zwPOz8bmXT
— BuzzFeed UK Politics (@BuzzFeedUKPol) June 10, 2016
Updated
On the World at One the Labour MP Clive Lewis said that politicians and the public needed to have an “honest conversation” about immigration. He acknowledged that people had legitimate concerns about it, but he said it was also important to recognise that Europe needed immigrants because of its ageing population.
And he criticised some papers and politicians for whipping up hysteria on the subject.
This is the analogy I would use; if a politician and a newspaper collude and say ‘let’s publicly say an asteroid is going to hit the planet’, do you blame the person who goes out running around saying ‘the end of the world is nigh’? No, you don’t, it’s not their fault, it’s the people that are lying to people, covering their backsides, as to what the issues of immigration are. The reason people are concerned about immigration is partly because of the hysteria that some politicians and newspapers are whipping up on this.
And here is Lord Mandelson, the former Labour business secretary and Britain Stronger in Europe campaigner, commenting on what Wolfgang Schäuble said. (See 3.25pm.) Mandelsons said:
This finally knocks on the head the Leave campaign’s claim that we can leave the EU and still enjoy the benefits of the single market. We cannot leave the club and continue to use its facilities.
Being outside the single market would be a hammer blow to the UK economy. Our future trade will be hit and our manufacturing sector, which relies on the single market’s free movement of goods and people, will be at risk.
This is the cold reality of Brexit that the British people must face. If we leave we lose the economic gains of being the world’s largest free trade zone, putting jobs and livelihoods at risk.
Vote Leave has responded to Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, saying that the UK would not have access to the single market if it left the EU. This is from Matthew Elliott, its chief executive.
There is no question about it, Britain will still have access to the Single Market after we vote Leave. It would be perverse of the eurozone to try to create artificial barriers - and would do far more damage to them than to anyone else.
Elliott is using a different defintion of access.
Vote Leave has said it does not want the UK to be a full member of the single market. It does not want the UK to have to follow all the single market’s regulatory rules and allow free movement of labour, as EU member states that are full members of the single market have to do. But it still expects the UK to be able to sell goods into the single market.
And Schäuble is not saying the UK would not be able to sell goods to Germany. He is saying the EU would not want to allow the UK to retain all the advantages of being a full member of the single market. Vote Leave does not want this, but Schäuble’s comment may have been prompted by reports that, if the UK does vote to leave, MPs may try to insist on retaining full single market membership as the legislation for withdrawal is going through parliament.
Ashdown says Leave campaign has approach to sovereignty that is 100 years out of date
Paddy Ashdown, the former Lib Dem leader, gave a speech on the EU referendum this morning. Here are two extracts.
- Ashdown accused Leave campaigners of having an approach to sovereignty that was 100 years out of date.
The Brexit case is 100 years out of date. They think that sovereignty still lies, unchanged, where it lay at the height of the British Empire, safely cocooned and protected in the institutions of Whitehall. They say they want to take their country back – that’s right – back 100 years to an age which is long past and has little relevance to global the realities of today ...
Here is the truth the Brexiteers refuse to accept: There is now more power to affect the lives of British citizens, lying outside our national institutions and beyond our borders, than lying within them.
We used to be able to divide politics between domestic and foreign. This is now no longer possible.
There is no domestic question that can today be resolved within our domestic institutions alone; not crime, not health, not jobs, not security, not prosperity, not the environment, not transport, not agriculture, not fisheries, not immigration. Good outcomes on all these - and many more - are best secured – indeed only secured – by working effectively, not just nationally, but internationally with those who share our interest.
- He said the UK had always benefited from immigration.
We act as though immigration is a new challenge. It is not. Vast movements of population ahead of war and pestilence and plague has always been with us. Churchill called us the “mongrel nation”, made up as we are of Angles and Saxons and Danes and Vikings and Huguenots and Jews and Ugandan Asians and West Indians and the new wave of migrants from eastern Europe. And that is what has shaped our national character.
And by the way London is the mongrel city – which is one of the reasons why it is the world’s only successful mega-city.
Migration is not a new fact. It is an age old one.
Mass movement of people is the new normal – the new global strategic challenge of our time. It is not temporary and it is not time limited and, with global warming, it is only going to increase ...
We will either deal with the new global challenge of migration as a European region together, or we will not deal with it. And we will either deal with it using our humanity, or we will be forced to do it with barbed wire and truncheons – and that way comes, not to more peace, but more conflict.
And by the way, given that this is now not just a European challenge, but also a global one, my guess is that it will not be long before we will realise that we need some new global architecture for coping with migration. And if the EU was wise, we should be pushing for that too.
Here are some fundamental facts about immigration, which we have so far shied away from saying in this debate.
There is no wave of immigration into this country that we have not benefited from economically and culturally.
And here is some Twitter comment on what Penny Mordaunt had to say.
BuzzFeed readers are quizzing armed forces minister Penny Mordaunt about #EURef. Tune in: https://t.co/ts6sNUfBRX pic.twitter.com/AUXZuEYQlk
— BuzzFeed UK Politics (@BuzzFeedUKPol) June 10, 2016
These are from the Telegraph’s Kate McCann.
Penny Mordaunt stops just short of accusing the PM of lying to the British people over Turkey ... just.
— Kate McCann (@KateEMcCann) June 10, 2016
Mordaunt uses Theresa May as a shield. Says it's not "racist or radical" to talk about migration and Turkey, likens her comments to May's
— Kate McCann (@KateEMcCann) June 10, 2016
Mordaunt says the UK's gross Brussels contribution is the same as sending "a warship a week to the EU"
— Kate McCann (@KateEMcCann) June 10, 2016
Mordaunt says there have been "a number of tragic moments in this campaign", says Blair/Major comments about Northern Ireland were offensive
— Kate McCann (@KateEMcCann) June 10, 2016
And this is from my colleague Peter Walker.
Penny Mordaunt's ratio of actual opinions expressed/facts presented per words spoken is impressively low.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) June 10, 2016
Penny Mordaunt has finished her stint at the BuzzFeed town hall event.
They “vote” at the end, and she did quite well.
Amongst the studio audience, she got 63% in favour, 36% against. (Not sure what happened to the other 1%.)
And, online, she got 6,292 “likes” - roughly double the number of dislikes.
BuzzFeed has started its EU “debate” this afternoon. Four senior figures are being questioned one after another in a session that is being livestreamed on Facebook.
Penny Mordaunt, the pro-Brexit defence minister, is up now. Later we’ve got Nicola Sturgeon (at 3pm), Nigel Farage (at 4pm) and David Cameron (at 5pm.)
Lunchtime summary
- Labour has claimed that a rightwing Tory government responding to the economic downturn caused by Brexit could end up increasing VAT by 2% and getting rid of child benefit. Tom Watson, the deputy Labour leader, floated the these possibilities in a document called “Tory Brexit Budget”, which is based on authoritative forecasts as to what might happen to the economy post-Brexit and on what Boris Johnson and some of his allies have said in the past about allies. The document assumes Johnson would replace David Cameron as prime minister. (See 12.03pm.) Labour also released this poster.
John Whittingdale, the pro-Brexit culture secretary, told BBC News that the Labour claims were “complete nonsense”. He said their figures were “increasingly hysterical predictions with no bearing on reality”.
- The Labour MP Frank Field has said Labour’s EU stance could cost the party 1m votes. (See 12.30pm.) And the Labour MP John Mann, who has announced he is voting to Leave, has made a similar point, saying the party’s problem is that its supporters fundamentally disagree with its stance on immigration. (See 10.19am.)
- More than 436,000 people applied to vote in the EU referendum during the 48-hour extended registration period after the government-run website crashed, it has been revealed. (See 10.56am.)
- Ed Miliband, the former Labour leader, has accused Leave of trying to “defraud” Labour voters into backing its campaign feigning concern for the NHS and workers’ rights. In a speech he said:
They are trying to perpetrate what I can only describe as a fraud on the British people. There is a reason they are doing this and it is deadly serious - because they need to persuade Labour voters if they are to win this referendum. And they know their real agenda will have no appeal for these voters.
I say to Labour voters, don’t be taken in by the fraud of the Leave campaign, Tories who in the last days of this contest are trying to disguise themselves in Labour clothes.
It is not the richest, the top 1%, who would suffer the most from this economic shock, it is working people who would pay the price in losing their jobs, lower wages and cuts to public services.
Photograph: Will Oliver/EPA
- Tom Watson has admitted that he is worried that almost half of Labour supporters do not know where the party stands on the EU referendum. He said:
The one thing that does concern me is that the polls seem to say that about 40% of Labour supporters don’t yet know our position. The Labour party is about as united as it possibly can be in asking people to Remain ... There are two weeks to go, we need to get that message out, we need to redouble our efforts.
- Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has slammed the door on Britain retaining access to the single market if it votes to the leave the European Union. As Philip Oltermann reports, in an interview in a Brexit-themed issue of German weekly Der Spiegel, the influential veteran politician ruled out the possibility of the UK following a Swiss or Norwegian model where it could enjoy the benefits of the single market without being an EU member.“That won’t work,” Schäuble told Der Spiegel. “It would require the country to abide by the rules of a club from which it currently wants to withdraw.
Updated
Labour MP Khalid Mahmood defects from Leave to Remain
Labour MP Khalid Mahmood has become the latest high profile defector in the referendum campaign.
Mahmood, a former board member of Vote Leave, has followed in the footsteps of Tory MP Sarah Wollaston in revealing that he has changed his mind about Britain’s future in the EU.
Mahmood claimed the Brexit campaign was racist and that it had been hijacked by issues of immigration and race.
Mahmood, the MP for Perry Barr in Birmingham, unofficially left the Leave camp two months ago but announced his position at a press conference today.
However, just two weeks ago in an interview with the Guardian it was clear that he still had more affinity with Brexit.
He told of horror stories of eastern European immigrants murdering Pakistani families and Asian women having their gold bangles torn from their arms by Romanian gangs.
He was fearful of the influx of poor immigrants into “ghettoised” communities that he says are already struggling with a lack of housing and resources, saying: “We don’t want an open house. We don’t do criminal checks on them. We can’t stop certain types of people coming in.”
He also claimed eastern Europeans were exploited the UK markets and send “benefit monies” back home to their large families.
But now he claims to sit firmly in the Remain camp decrying alleged racist ideologies and scaremongering by Brexit campaigners.
In a statement he said:
I have spoken out before about the language used by some in the leave camp about immigration, which I regard as negative and narrow minded.
I said previously that I wouldn’t be taking an active part in the Leave campaign for that reason. But I have also become increasingly concerned by some of the arguments Leave have put forward about workers’ rights.
We have been reminded yet again this morning that the senior Tory figures who want to leave the EU also want to remove rights in the workplace.
Labour governments introduced many of those rights but Europe underpins them.
I started my working life as an apprentice toolmaker in Birmingham. I passionately believe in defending and extending those workplace rights.
I am now convinced that this can only be achieved if the UK remains in the EU. That is where the interests of British workers lie and that is why I will be campaigning from now until June 23rd for Britain to remain in Europe.
Someone BTL was asking what Theresa May, the home secretary, has been up to recently. She is pro-Remain, but she is not being very vocal, leading to speculation that she does not want to alienate Tory Brexiteers in the event of leadership election coming up soon.
But she has spoken today. Arriving in Brussels fora meeting of the European justice and home affairs council, she said:
I am very clear that decisions taken here help to protect the United Kingdom’s security and safety. Taking control is not about walking away from the table. Taking control is about making sure our voice is heard and it counts, but we can only take a lead on these issues if we are sitting around the table in the first place.
Her comment may have been prompted by John Hayes, the security minister in her department, using an article in the Telegraph today to explain why he is voting Leave.
Field says Labour's EU stance could cost it 1m votes
Frank Field, one of the few Labour MPs who is voting Leave, has said his party could lose 1m votes from the pro-Remain stance it is taking in the referendum. He said:
In trying to scare Labour voters to back Remain, our leadership is on course to lose another one million votes to Ukip, just as we did in 2015.
Those voters believed then that we no longer represent their interests. Labour voters must be encouraged in the referendum to vote as they believe is in the best interests of our country.
The danger now is that another one million Labour voters will believe a Ukip vote is the only way of protecting them from further waves of immigration and the horrific side effects of globalisation.
At the last election Labour received 9.3m votes, compared with the Tories’ 11.3m.
Cooper says EU referendum is not about immigration
At the launch of the “Tory Brexit Budget” Yvette Cooper, the former shadow home secretary, rejected claims that the EU referendum was about immigration. Asked if net migration was too high, she replied:
This is not what this campaign is about. Because actually Brexit will not make a difference.
There is a lot of false promise being made because in the end they will have to do a trade deal with Europe and under the current European rules in order to get a good trade deal - as they have promised - they will end up signing up to an immigration deal as well.
So I do think more reforms are going to be needed. The Schengen system, which we are not part of, will need to have more reform, as I have called for before.
But in the end the choice for people right now is going to be a choice about what the impact is on people’s jobs, what the impact is on public services and the huge risk.
A Tory Brexit government might scrap child benefit and raise VAT by 2%, Labour says
Vote Leave dismissed the reports from the Treasury, the IMF, the OECD, the IFS and almost everyone else about leaving the EU would damage the economy as scaremongering, but all those forecasts are nothing compared to Labour’s spoof Tory Brexit Budget. It’s a real horrorshow.
It is scaremongering, but it is evidence-based scaremongering. The 10-page document, which is written in the style and typeface of a Treasury red book, has enough data in it to make it at least a semi-plausible account of what a rightwing Tory government might do in the event of the economy crashing post Brexit.
The document starts with a mock executive summary, signed by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, respectively prime minister and chancellor.
The latest forecasts suggest that the deficit in 2019-20 will now be around £28bn, compared to the £10.4bn surplus forecast in the March budget. This is in line with the analysis set out by the Institute for Fiscal Studies in May. This budget sets out a plan to get the budget into balance by the end of the parliament, and achieve a surplus as well.
The plan set out today will have significant implications for our public services, including the NHS. Further reductions in day-to-day spending will accompany tax rises and reductions in welfare expenditure.
Recession, higher unemployment and further austerity – we believe these are a price worth paying for leaving the European Union.
Economic outlook
The document uses forecasts from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research to assume what might happen to the economy, and government revenue, by 2020. It assumes the UK would not strike a trade deal with the EU, and would instead rely on World Trade Organisation rules (the worst option, according to the Treasury).
Here are some of those figures.
The Labour document assumes this would lead the government having to find an extra £28bn by 2019-20. It then makes the following assumptions, based on the money coming from welfare cuts, tax rises and departmental cuts.
Welfare cuts
- A Tory Brexit government might have to cut welfare by £9bn, including scrapping child benefit for most families, Labour claims.
Here is the quote from the spoof document.
Our plans set out today entail cuts totalling £9.1bn, including reviving reforms to personal independence payments, changing the universal credit taper rate, and incorporating child benefit into universal credit so to remove child benefit from all but the poorest families. We will also accelerate the increase in the state pension age ...
The prime minister has himself argued against middle-class families receiving child benefit, describing it as an “absurd system whereby low-income people paid in their taxes for richer families to receive this Mussolini-like reward for procreation.” We will therefore abolish child benefit and roll the payments into Universal Credit, saving £5.2bn by the end of the parliament.
The quote is real. It is from a Johnson column from 2013.
Tax rises
- A Tory Brexit government might have to raise VAT by 2 percentage points, Labour claims.
Here is the quote from the spoof document.
Given the scale of the fiscal consolidation necessary the government has decided to end the commitment to a ‘Five Year Tax Lock’. This will allow us to complete the final section of our additional austerity programme – a 2 percentage point increase in the standard rate of VAT.
Such a move will cost: a couple with children £360 a year; pensioner couples £220 a year; and single parent families £180 a year
We strongly believe that this can be absorbed by the British public. Successive Conservative governments have increased VAT, so we see this as the logical next step. As John Redwood – leading Brexit campaigner – has previously argued, the current VAT rate of 20 per cent is “below the optimising point” in terms of raising revenue.
The quote is real. It is something Redwood said in the Commons on 8 April 2014.
Departmental spending cuts
- A Tory Brexit government might have to cut departmental spending by an extra 2.8% by 2019-20, on top of cuts already planned. The health budget could fall by £3.5bn.
Other deregulation
- A Tory Brexit government might introduce charges into the NHS and scrap some employment regulations, Labour claims.
Here is a quote from the spoof document.
As the prime minister has previously argued the weight of employment legislation the UK was subject to through the European Union was “back-breaking” ...
For this reason we will launch a wide-ranging review of social and employment legislation with a view to reducing significantly the burdens we believe are placed on business under the current system ..
We also believe that our National Health Service is due major reform. As the prime minister has himself argued in the past: “if NHS services continue to be free in this way, they will continue to be abused like any free service. If people have to pay for them, they will value them more” ...
We will therefore consult on whether the National Health Service should become the insurance-based system of healthcare Nigel Farage has called for19 and/or whether a system of charging for certain services should be introduced.
The Johnson quote is from his book, The Essential Boris Johnson.
Updated
What Germany admires about UK - nonchalance, progress, inner independence and 'anti-authoritarian, defiant tendencies'
Philip Oltermann’s story also highlights what the German magazine Der Spiegel is saying in its “Please don’t go” special bilingual Brexit edition. Its editorial talks about how much Germans value Britain.
It turns out the Germans admire us for nonchalance, progress, inner independence and “myriad anti-authoritarian, defiant tendencies”. Here’s an excerpt from the editorial.
[While it is too late] to convince the British to love the EU, perhaps we should use this opportunity to mention how much the rest of Europe admires them. It’s unbelievable that they don’t seem to see how much they’ve shaped the continent, how much we value them here, how close we Germans feel to them.
Germany has always looked across the Channel with some degree of envy. On our emotional map of Europe, the Italians were responsible for love and good food, the French for beauty and elegance and the Brits for nonchalance and progress. They have an inner independence that we Germans lack, in addition to myriad anti-authoritarian, defiant tendencies. A lot of what happened in Britain spilled over to us sooner or later, reinforcing our cultural ties.
But it could be exactly those “anti-authoritarian, defiant tendencies” that result in Britain voting to leave.
Germany has said that, if the UK leaves the EU, it will not be able to retain access to the single market.
Here’s our story.
And here’s how it starts.
Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has slammed the door on Britain retaining access to the single market if it votes to the leave the European Union.
In an interview in a Brexit-themed issue of German weekly Der Spiegel, the influential veteran politician ruled out the possibility of the UK following a Swiss or Norwegian model where it could enjoy the benefits of the single market without being an EU member.
“That won’t work,” Schäuble told Der Spiegel. “It would require the country to abide by the rules of a club from which it currently wants to withdraw.
“If the majority in Britain opts for Brexit, that would be a decision against the single market. In is in. Out is out. One has to respect the sovereignty of the British people.”
Ed Miliband says Leave campaign a 'fraud' because they don't care about NHS and rights
I’ve had a quick chat with Ed Miliband before he speaks on behalf of the Remain camp at an event in London organised by the UK in a Changing Europe think tank. The former Labour leader said his address would be “a call to arms for Labour voters to vote for Remain, because I believe it’s the right thing for working people”. He continued:
I think it’s the right thing for our economy, for jobs, for social justice, for tackling climate change, for tackling tax avoidance, for all of the big things we need to deal with as a country.
Miliband criticised Brexiteers for, as he saw it, falsely taking on the slogans of the left to push for their goal:
It’s also calling out the fraud of the Leave campaign. What we’re seeing is Tory people in the Leave campaign trying to clothe themselves in Labour colours, trying to say that whether it’s the NHS, or inequality, or the rights of working people, that somehow they’re in the right place on this.
I’ve got to ask: where were these people at the last general election? They certainly weren’t making that case. Actually, all of the record and all of the ideology of those who want us to leave is because they want to sweep away workers’ rights. They want a bonfire of those rights.
The NHS would be weaker because our economy would be weaker. That need to be called out, and that’s what I’m doing today.
Miliband agreed that people like Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were using arguments they knew to be false.
Every time the Leave campaign gets exposed they say it’s project fear. It’s not project fear, it’s project fact. The fact is that Boris Johnson said two years ago that he was worried about the burden of regulations. He cited things like directives on part-time work, on agency work, on things that give vital rights to people. Whenever they get confronted with an inconvenient fact, they say it’s about fear.
Ed Miliband making his Labour case for staying in Europe speech in Westminster. pic.twitter.com/iTLixRbGRg
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) June 10, 2016
More than 400,000 applied to register to vote in 48-hour extension period
More than 436,000 people applied to vote in the EU referendum during the 48-hour extended registration period after the government-run website crashed, the Press Association reports.
Some 238,903 voters applied to register online on Wednesday, joined by 191,508 on Thursday, and another 5,936 people using paper forms, bringing the total applications over the last four days to almost 1.2m.
The deadline to register to vote was pushed back by MPs after thousands of voters were prevented from registering by the original deadline of midnight on Tuesday when the website failed.
According to a live monitoring site there was a flurry of activity on the registration service webpage in the minutes before midnight on Thursday.
The monitor showed there were just under 5,000 people using the service at 11.55pm and more than 3,000 still on the site after the deadline had passed.
During the 24 hours leading up to the original deadline, more than half a million people applied to register, causing a system overload.
Here’s a link to Labour’s Tory Brexit Budget document.
Read the #ToryBrexit budget here ⛔ 💷 📉 #EUref https://t.co/pINK4JmdLC pic.twitter.com/NE8k2njmdN
— Labour Press Team (@labourpress) June 10, 2016
Summary and analysis coming up soon ...
My colleague Rowena Mason is at the Labour briefing about the “Tory Brexit budget”. Labour have been spending money on Boris Johnson masks.
Just been handed a copy of a "Tory Brexit budget" by Boris-masked Labour activists. pic.twitter.com/fiZPMP7fCt
— Rowena Mason (@rowenamason) June 10, 2016
I will post a summary of the document, which has just been released, in a moment.
Mann says Labour's problem is its supporters don't like its EU policy, not that they haven't heard it
The Labour MP John Mann’s declaration that he is voting Leave is a bit more suprising. He explains his thinking in an open letter to Sun readers. And in an interview on the Today programme he went into more detail.
Many Labour figures think the party’s problem in the EU referendum has been that it has not got its message across to voters; that it has not told them about the Labour case for staying in (to protect employment rights, in part), and that as a result Labour supporters are not backing Remain.
Mann’s argument was different, and more worrying for the party. He said Labour’s problem is not that its supporters do not know about its polices; it’s that they do, and that they profoundly disagree.
Here are the key points.
- Mann said he was backing Leave because he found it impossible to argue for Remain.
I’ve attempted to put the case for and against in public forums, and I’ve found it impossible to argue the case for. It’s because the EU is fundamentally broken. It’s undemocratic. Even when you want to get changes, as David Cameron tried, you can’t get them.
- He said immigration was the key factor for him and that the EU’s “fundamental weaknesses” was that its rules did not allow a country like the UK to control immigration. He said immigration created problems in places like his constituency, Bassetlaw in Nottinghamshire. He said that the community could adapt to cope with immigration, but that what was unacceptable was not knowing how high net migration would continue to rise in future.
- He said he wanted a limit place on net migration. But he would not say what the figure should be. It was for the government to decide, he said.
- He said Labour’s problem was not that its supporters did not know about its views. It was that they did not agree with its position on immigration.
It is not that Labour is not getting its message across to Labour voters. It’s that Labour voters are fundamentally disagreeing on this issue.
- He said his stance was not motivated by opposition to Jeremy Corbyn. (Mann has been a strong critic of Corbyn.) On this, Corbyn was more in touch with voters than other Labour figures, Mann said.
It has got nothing to do with that. Jeremy Corbyn is far more in touch on this issue than Ed Miliband. Hence he’s been more equivocal in some of the things he’s said ... It is nothing to do with for or against Jeremy Corbyn.
- He said he wanted to see Britain leaving the EU followed by more decentralisation, with power over issues like planning further devolved to local communities.
Updated
Here is the Labour MP Barry Sheerman on the “news” that his colleague Dennis Skinner if voting Leave. See 7.40am. (I’ve used the inverted commas, because Skinner is a diehard Eurosceptics, and so this is not much of a surprise.)
I'm very fond of Dennis Skinner but he's wrong on # Brexit & I fear that his Bolsover constituents would pay a high price if we left EU.
— Barry Sheerman (@BarrySheerman) June 10, 2016
According to the Birmingham Mail, the Labour MP Khalid Mahmood, who was once a Leave supporter, will announce today he is backing Remain. He abandoned Leave in February, because he said he did not like its negative focus on immigration, but now he has reportedly staged a full defection.
Labour claims a 'Brexit budget' would require tax rises or benefit cuts worth £18bn
In another sign that the EU referendum is unfolding like a classic general election, today we’re getting an attack document that focuses on costing the other side’s plans. It comes from Labour, and it will set out what they claim would be the contents of a Tory “Brexit budget”.
Using figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ report on the economic impact of leaving the EU, Labour has tried to estimate what the cut to government revenues forecast by the IFS would mean for departmental spending, taxes and benefits.
We will see the full document later but, according to a briefing note sent out by Labour overnight, they will claim a “Brexit budget” would mean:
- Departmental budgets falling by a further 2.8% in 2019-20, on top of cuts already planned.
- Tax rises or benefit cuts worth £18bn.
Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, will say:
Working people across the UK face a double threat if we vote to Leave: a massive black hole in the public finances, and an unfair Tory government that will make ordinary families pay for it through further cuts and tax rises.
Labour is clear that Britain is better off in Europe. It brings us jobs, growth and investment, protects British workers and consumers and helps keep us safe. Leaving would put that at risk.
People like Boris Johnson and Michael Gove might be able to afford that risk – but millions of working people across our country simply can’t.
Leave will not accept these figures at all because they claim the IFS is simply wrong about Brexit reducing national income.
Tom Watson taking part in a community meeting at the Guru Har Rai Gurdwara Sahib temple yesterday. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
The Ukip MEP Patrick O’Flynn thinks Ed Miliband’s appearance on the Today programme this morning proves Ed Miliband’s point about Labour being too Hampstead and not enough Hull. (See 7.16am.)
Burnham says there is too much North London in Lab In campaign and then they wheel out Ed Miliband...
— Patrick O'Flynn (@oflynnmep) June 10, 2016
Andy Burnham is concerned that his Newsnight comments (see 7.16am) are being interpreted in some quarters as criticism of the party’s EU referendum campaign. A spokesperson for him has put out a statement saying:
Andy Burnham’s comments have been misreported. He was answering a question about Labour in general being ‘a coalition between Hamsptead and Hull’. He repeated his long-standing analysis that Labour in the last two decades has been too London-centric.
Cameron says Brexit could put future of HS2 in jeopardy
Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, taking over from Claire.
David Cameron has warned that Brexit could put in jeopardy the future of HS2 and HS3, the more sketchy plan for using high speed rail to link northern cities either side of the Pennines. This is what he said in a Q&A with readers of the Yorkshire Post.
If we stay in [the EU] all our plans are fully intact and that includes HS2, and what we have said about HS3, and the overall rail investment programme.
If we come out, of course I’m sure we will want to try and maintain these important investments.
But when you hear nine out of ten economists, the Bank of England, the Treasury, the IMF and now the National Institute (of Economic and Social Research), all saying our economy will be smaller and will generate less tax revenue, obviously that does threaten potentially some public spending programmes.
This is from the Yorkshire Post’s Kate Proctor.
Jacket off, summer chinos on, gestures a-plenty.... relaxed Cameron making his case for Remain in Yorkshire #yplive pic.twitter.com/KOSRZzPAHr
— Kate Proctor (@KateProctorYP) June 9, 2016
Updated
It’s that time when I deliver the blog to Andrew Sparrow, who’ll be here in a minute to pick up the day’s action.
Thanks for reading and for all the comments.
Ed Miliband on the Today programme
Former Labour leader Ed Miliband – today really is Labour day, barely a peep from anyone else so far – has just been on the BBC Today programme.
He appears to share Andy Burnham’s alarm that a win for remain on 23 June is in doubt:
This referendum is in question … Not enough of our voters have heard that we’re in and we’re for remain.
Part of that, he says, is because
The sexy part of this campaign has been the blue-on-blue action .
In comparison, he says, 95% of Labour MPs, along with the unions, former leaders and current leader Jeremy Corbyn, are united for remain.
But Miliband does concede that Corbyn is not what he – with a laugh – describes as a “euro-zealot”. Corbyn’s position, he says, “having doubts about the way Europe has behaved on some issues” but still for In, is “quite close” to the views of many Labour voters.
The leave campaign are trying to perpetuate a fraud on Labour voters. They’re trying to say, look, we really share your values, whether it’s the NHS, or workers’ rights, or fairness in our society.
We’ve got to call that out. The cuts that would come would hit Labour areas hardest.
Pressed on whether Labour is avoiding the immigration question, Miliband says:
Immigration is a concern for all voters … Don’t crater our economy to try to deal with concerns about immigration.
It would be really bad for our economy and it’s working people who would be hit.
We should deal with illegal undercutting of wages … but we shouldn’t use the problems in the NHS, the problems in housing … we shouldn’t use immigration as the alibi.
Free movement of labour is an essential part of the agreement of being in the European Union … The price we would pay of leaving the European Union – in trade, in wages, in unemployment, in recession – is a price we should not be willing to pay.
Miliband said there was a positive case to be made for EU membership, citing workers’ rights, the economy, and tackling inequality and climate change:
This is not a midterm protest, this is not some super by-election, this is a once-in-a-generation decison that will shape our country for decades.
Asked to predict the outcome, Miliband said his election forecasting days were behind him:
Most people haven’t voted in this referendum yet … The result is always in question.
I’m optimistic that we can this … We haven’t done enough yet.
Updated
Senior Labour figures will warn today that a vote to leave would embolden the Thatcherite wing of the Conservative party, report Heather Stewart and Severin Carrell:
Labour will outline specific cuts it believes a Brexit cabinet might make, including squeezing the NHS budget.
Deputy leader Tom Watson, appearing at a press conference on Friday alongside his shadow cabinet colleagues Angela Eagle and Owen Smith, will say:
Working people across the UK face a double threat if we vote to leave: a massive black hole in the public finances, and an unfair Tory government that will make ordinary families pay for it through further cuts and tax rises.”
Separately, former leader Ed Miliband and Yvette Cooper, a former Treasury minister, will publish a report called Boris’s Brexit Britain, predicting that public services would be cut and workers’ rights undermined if a British exit from the EU enabled the former mayor of London to unseat David Cameron.
Britain is at risk of being taken over by the far right of the Conservative party, and Labour communities will be the victims. It’s a Thatcherite agenda, really,” Cooper told the Guardian.
Miliband will say:
The leave campaign are trying to perpetrate what I can only describe as a fraud on the British people,” accusing Vote Leave campaigners of “trying to disguise themselves in Labour clothes”.
AFP reports that Toyota is threatening legal action over Vote Leave’s use of its logo in campaign material:
In a statement, the company said the use of the Toyota logo in Vote Leave campaign literature “could mislead the reader into thinking that Toyota endorses the Vote Leave campaign”.
“We offer no such endorsement and further we are considering a formal legal complaint at this unauthorised use of our trademarks, which infringes our rights as the owners of the Toyota brand,” it said.
Toyota, which employs 3,400 people and has two factories in Britain, is one of six “major companies” cited in Vote Leave literature as saying that “they’ll stay in the UK whatever the result of the referendum”.
Johan van Zyl, president and CEO of Toyota Motor Europe, said in February that the EU referendum was a matter for the British people, but said continued membership “is best for our operations and their long-term competitiveness”.
Some of the other companies named by Vote Leave – Nissan, Vauxhall, which is part of General Motors, General Electric, Unilever and Airbus – also cried foul.
“This is a complete misrepresentation of Unilever’s position,” said a spokesman for the company, adding that it had complained to Vote Leave and intended to complain to the Electoral Commission watchdog.
“We firmly support Britain remaining.”
A spokesman for GE UK also told AFP it had not given permission for its logo to be used, and said it had made its position clear in two public letters “supporting the UK’s continued participation in the EU”.
And here is Labour veteran Dennis Skinner in the Morning Star on why he, too, is backing Brexit:
My opposition from the very beginning has been on the lines that fighting capitalism state-by-state is hard enough. It’s even harder when you’re fighting it on the basis of eight states, 10 states and now 28.
In the old days they could argue you might get a socialist government in Germany, but there’s not been one for donkeys’ years.
At one time there was Italy, the Benelux countries, France and Germany, Portugal, Spain and us.
Now there’s just one in France and it’s hanging on by the skin of its teeth.
He agreed with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to share a platform with David Cameron on the remain campaign trail and said he too would not team up with the Tories or Ukip in support of leaving the EU:
I won’t join these Tory and Ukip campaigns, I don’t believe in helping to bolster their prestige … I don’t play any part with them.
Here’s Labour MP John Mann’s letter in today’s Sun spelling out why he will vote for Brexit.
He says too few of his Westminster colleagues have picked what he thinks is the right side in the referendum campaign:
On polling day they are going to get a big shock across the country.
They are going to get a big shock about how Labour councillors vote, they will get a big shock about how Labour members vote. And it shouldn’t come as a shock how many Labour voters will vote.
Mann says immigration is the key issue pushing him to Brexit:
I don’t want to live in a country with 80-90 million people living in it. I don’t want everything to be one big city. And the only way you can deal with that is by controlling borders.
And he says the remain campaign argument that the EU protects workers’ rights is a distortion:
Many Labour colleagues say we should stay to protect workers’ rights.
But the poorest in society are the ones who have been hit by agency workers and zero hours contracts already. They are the ones who have been hit by labour flexibility with so many workers coming into the country.
Updated
Andy Burnham’s intervention will of course be viewed as part of Labour’s internal struggle over this campaign, and the party’s commitment to it. But it’s also an acknowledgment that the polls suggest things are much closer than many in the remain campaign would be comfortable admitting.
Here’s what he told BBC2’s Newsnight:
We have definitely been far too much Hampstead and not enough Hull in recent times and we need to change that. Here we are two weeks away from the very real prospect that Britain will vote for isolation.
I think it would have a profound effect on our national life – the fragmentation that will come, the fear and the division.
Those are all the things that the terrorists couldn’t create with their bombs and yet we will have a situation where society becomes more divided.
If this decision is taken, dominoes will start to fall. It won’t just be the EU that starts to break up, it will be Britain too.
Updated
Morning briefing
Good morning and welcome back to the live blog, as we chew over yesterday’s debate-that-was-actually-a-debate (albeit one not featuring the prime minister).
I’ve rounded up the key moments below, along with the rest of the news you need for another day on the referendum campaign. Andrew Sparrow will be along later to take his seat.
Do come and chat in the comments below or find me on Twitter @Claire_Phipps.
The big picture
Last night’s ITV debate pitted Conservatives Boris Johnson and junior energy minister Andrea Leadsom, alongside Labour’s Gisela Stuart, for leave; against Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon, Tory energy secretary Amber Rudd and Labour frontbencher Angela Eagle for remain.
The two-hour face-off raced through themes familiar in the campaign – immigration, the economy, sovereignty, the NHS, scaremongering – and one less well-rehearsed question on women and the EU (which became a broader discussion of workers’ rights).
Here’s the round-up of the debate from our Westminster team, the verdicts from Guardian columnists, and John Crace’s sketch on how to win over undecided voters (spoiler: say nothing).
It all took place as Andy Burnham warned that remain faced the “very real prospect” of defeat in the referendum. The Labour shadow home secretary told BBC’s Newsnight that the campaign had failed to reach out to traditional Labour voters and to tackle fears over immigration:
We have definitely been far too much Hampstead and not enough Hull in recent times and we need to change that. Here we are two weeks away from the very real prospect that Britain will vote for isolation.
What we learned in the debate
- The remain campaign has decided that Boris Johnson and his personal ambitions are a good target. Nicola Sturgeon said the former London mayor was not interested in people’s jobs, only David Cameron’s job, a theme embraced by Amber Rudd:
I fear that the only number that Boris is interested in is the one that says No 10.
- Johnson might not have been the only person on stage with an eye on leadership. As he taunted his Labour opponent for her party’s failure to appoint a female leader, Angela Eagle retorted:
Beware of the blond bombshell!
(That’s a moniker that has frequently been applied to Johnson himself, of course.)
- The leave campaign has two key weapons: immigration and accusations of scaremongering (bonus points if elites are involved in the fear-spreading, and double-bonus for co-opting a remain campaigner):
Johnson: There’s a member of that panel who’s complained about the remain campaign and says that it’s ‘miserable, negative and fear-based, and fear-based campaigning of this kind starts to insult people’s intelligence’.
Now that was Nicola Sturgeon … And I have to say, I agree with Nicola.
- Sturgeon is one of the few politicians willing to make a positive case for immigration, calling it a “two-way street” that also benefits UK citizens overseas.
This is not a one-way street. How would we feel if people in other countries were talking about us in the way that we’re talking about people … it’s disgraceful.
- She’s also one of the few campaigners prepared to make a positive case for the EU itself:
In the modern world, independent countries must work together. And that’s what the EU is all about: independent countries choosing to cooperate for the benefit of all.
- It’s hard to share a stage with Boris Johnson, even if you’re on the same side. Gisela Stuart (“I am an immigrant. I believe in Britain. I wouldn’t dream of talking down this country”) and Andrea Leadsom – standing across from her boss at the energy department – landed a few thumps, but even the remain panellists were zoomed in on the leave frontman.
What we didn’t
- If there will ever be an end to the row over the £350m figure.
Sturgeon: It is a scandal that it is still emblazoned across the campaign bus because it’s an absolute whopper.
Eagle: Get that lie off your bus.
Political toing-and-froing aside, here are some facts on that figure. First, the Guardian’s own reality check. The verdict? “At best misleading, and at worst wrong.”
And here’s what the UK Statistics Authority said a couple of weeks ago: “Misleading and undermines trust in official statistics.”
Official definitive @UKStatsAuth statement on the UK's EU membership fee and rebate https://t.co/z9J4Dn4wdd #bbcqt pic.twitter.com/2prtPqZ97J
— Full Fact (@FullFact) June 9, 2016
The key exchange
Johnson: If we took back control of our money, we’d have £10bn more if we left the EU, we’d have £10bn more to spend every year on our priorities …
Eagle: Boris, that’s a lie. That is a lie and you know it.
Clarification of the night
Courtesy of Eagle, who rowed back from her comment that “we’re not in the European Union” (and Johnson’s glee) to the more accurate “we’re not in Schengen … we’re not in the eurozone”.
Zinger of the night
Probably this (OK, rather rehearsed) line from Amber Rudd on Johnson:
He is the life and soul of the party but he is not the man you want driving you home at the end of evening.
But it’s run close by Johnson’s jibe that Sturgeon is “keener to be ruled by Brussels than Westminster”.
The Remain campaign verdict
Stronger In might be an “extraordinary alliance” across party lines, but Tory energy secretary Amber Rudd was the standout performer, according to Tory prime minister David Cameron:
.@AmberRudd_MP was a star in the #ITVEURef debate. She was passionate and clear about why we are #StrongerIn the EU, "leading not leaving."
— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) June 9, 2016
Will Straw, director of Britain Stronger in Europe, said it was:
Rich of Boris to talk about hope when his campaign has focused on fears on Turkey, Hitler and immigration.
The Leave campaign verdict
Iain Duncan Smith said things had got a bit personal:
The remain side came on with the usual old scare stories about Britain not being good enough but what really added to that, was lacing its way through that, was just personal abuse. One after another, you could see their heads dip down to read the line: ‘Now time to abuse Boris Johnson’.
Ukip’s Suzanne Evans thought Labour’s most high-profile Out spokeswoman was a hit:
Positivity, passion & patriotism from @GiselaStuart. Simply wonderful. #ITVEURef
— Suzanne Evans (@SuzanneEvans1) June 9, 2016
You should also know
- Labour MP John Mann says in an interview in the Sun that he will vote for Brexit, and Dennis Skinner says the same in the Morning Star.
- Pro-EU ministers want David Cameron to tell European leaders they must address immigration and free movement, even if the referendum result is to remain.
- Leaving the EU would force an emergency budget, further cuts in public spending and tax rises, senior Labour figures will warn today.
- DJ David Guetta, 150 can-can dancers and an acrobatic demonstration by the French air force will grace the opening ceremony for Euro 2016, which kicks off today.
Poll position
Bolstering news for leave campaigners from an Ipsos Mori poll yesterday commissioned by the UK in a Changing Europe, a group of non-partisan academics. It found 63% believed leaving the EU would reduce immigration and just 25% thought it would reduce their own living standards – and 13% said they reckoned they would be better off.
Less scientifically robust, but another debate last night – which saw Michael Howard, Jenny Jones and Daniel Hannan argue the leave case against Michael Heseltine, Alex Salmond and Vicky Pryce – resulted in an Oxford Union vote in favour of staying in, by 74% to 26%.
Diary
Plenty going on today, with many of last night’s panellists doing the rounds again.
- At 9.30am, Tom Watson, Angela Eagle and Yvette Cooper are at a Labour pro-EU event.
- The UK in a Changing Europe conference offers an Ed Miliband speech at 10.30am, and Iain Duncan Smith speaking at 4.30pm.
- The big buzz (sorry) will be around the Buzzfeed/Facebook Live town hall, with pro-Brexit armed forces minister Penny Mordaunt interviewed at 2pm; Nicola Sturgeon at 3pm; Nigel Farage at 4pm; and David Cameron at 5pm.
- Farage pops up again at 7.30pm to be interviewed by Andrew Neil on the BBC.
Read these
ITV political editor Robert Peston, in his snap verdict on the debate, said it was “extraordinary” to see Tory MPs attacking each other:
The Remain camp were aware that some of the research shows that voters don’t think that they are putting forward their case with enough enthusiasm and we saw a lot of gusto tonight and actually strikingly, also lots of personal attacks – particularly on Boris Johnson.
Accusations that he’s mainly motivated not by a desire to get us out of the EU but more by a desire to get into Number 10 – Amber Rudd, his close colleague, making that charge.
In the New Statesman, Helen Walmsley-Johnson wants to know how her pension would be affected in the event of Brexit:
We, the over-50s, are statistically not only most likely to vote in the forthcoming EU referendum but are also most likely to vote to leave. Apparently this is down to two things: a misty-eyed nostalgia for Britain before straight bananas and concern over net migration …
The Treasury’s analysis shows that if we leave the European Union millions of current and future pensioners will be worse off. Predictably Vote Leave, in the person of former pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, said this is ‘utterly outrageous’ and ‘cynical’.
I don’t know about you but given his record I find IDS less than credible on the subject of pensions or anything else really, which makes him an odd spokesperson to choose. But that aside, when you unpick the Treasury’s analysis, it’s broadly this: that leaving the EU would cause inflation to rise and that rise would erode the value of state pension increases to the tune of £137 per year, per state pensioner.
And in the Guardian, Martin Kettle wonders what happened to Michael Gove:
Gove has come a long way from that elegant but restrained initial statement of rejection of government policy at the start of the campaign.
As Gove himself might put it, it is as though he, in US Republican terms a Rand Paul-style doctrinal conservative, has morphed in the space of a few weeks into a Donald Trump-style scaremonger. The campaign on which Gove is now embarked is at odds with much of what he once stood for. The campaign is narrow, nasty, dishonest and driven by polling, while apparently spurning any of the old Govian high-minded argument. It is almost unrecognisable as the work of a man whose occasional willingness to give questioners the run of his mind meant that an hour in his company was always one of the more fascinating experiences in politics.
Baffling claim of the day
The Sun claims a – I must stress, non-official – pro-EU group planned to create a spoof pornographic film featuring a half-naked Boris Johnson:
We Are Europe hoped it would go viral before the EU referendum on June 23 and create a ‘spike of interest’ among Britain’s youth. They wanted randy Brits to look for it on explicit adult websites …
One scene involved a man having sex with a woman and looking at a photo of David Cameron and Angela Merkel. He asks his partner ‘Am I In?’ and she responds ‘YES BABY!’
With apologies to readers eating breakfast.
Celebrity endorsement of the day
Michael Moore, in the UK to promote his new film, Where to Invade Next, wondered aloud:
Why would you do this? … Why would you want to leave? It costs too much money? Immigrants? Really? That’s not who you are, come on.
The day in a tweet
From Jakub Krupa, UK correspondent for the Polish Press Agency, a neat summing-up:
Incumbent minister facing deputy in a TV debate, anti-immigration MP of migrant background & a Scottish nationalist arguing for the UK. +
— Jakub Krupa (@JakubKrupa) June 10, 2016
If today were a Madonna tour ...
It would be Blond Ambition. But without the pointy bras.
And another thing
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