The big picture
Today sees Boris Johnson and Michael Gove for the first time setting out together on the Vote Leave battle bus and heading to Preston.
To mark the occasion, the Leave campaign has lobbed another immigration story into the morning papers: this one a pledge that after Brexit, European would-be migrants to the UK would be subject to “a genuine Australian-style points based immigration system” and be required to “have the ability to speak good English”.
This, Johnson, Gove and co-author Priti Patel say, would level the playing field for EU citizens and those seeking to come to the UK from Commonwealth countries. There would be a couple of key exceptions: Irish citizens would still be able to travel freely into the UK, and EU citizens already in the country would be granted indefinite leave.
In an interview with the Guardian, fellow Leave fan Chris Grayling said controlling immigration was key to enabling young people to afford to buy a home:
If we are bringing a population the size of Newcastle upon Tyne into the country every single year, if we cannot set limits on the number of people that come and work in Britain, then simple maths says it is going to be even more difficult to get on to the housing ladder.
Nigel Farage – who’ll be on the Ukip battle bus today, which is not the same as the Vote Leave battle bus because sometimes you just need your own bus – said he was “pleased that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove now support [the] same policy I’ve advocated for years”.
But Will Straw, the executive director of Britain Stronger In Europe, insisted the plan would not work, saying Vote Leave was reading from the “Farage playbook”:
Australia, who have a points based immigration system, have twice as many migrants per head as the UK. Economic experts are agreed that leaving the single market would lead to recession – costing jobs and raising prices.
On which note, the TUC has labelled Brexit a “disaster” that would cost British workers their employment rights – and £38 a week. General secretary Frances O’Grady said:
£38 a week may not be much for politicians like Boris Johnson – a man who described his £250,000 fee for a weekly newspaper column as ‘chicken feed’. But for millions of workers, it’s the difference between heating or eating, between struggling or saving, and between getting by or getting on.
O’Grady said those campaigning for Britain to leave the EU were “phonies” who did not understand the challenges faced by workers:
It’s a bit like Iain Duncan Smith pretending to be the friend of the poor, when everyone knows he was the minister for food banks … Has Priti Patel ever struggled to pay the gas bill? I doubt it.
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- Caroline Lucas to stand for Green party leadership as job share with Jonathan Bartley
- Don’t worry, you can still get Milky Way Magic Stars if the UK leaves the EU
Poll position
Tuesday’s Guardian/ICM poll showing voters split 52%-48% in favour of Brexit is still reverberating this morning, including on the i front page.
As ICM’s director Martin Boon put it:
It is only one poll but, in a rather unexpected reverse of polling assumptions so far, both our phone poll and our online poll are consistent on both vote intentions and on the EU referendum.
Voters in Scotland were still more likely to vote for Remain.
An Ipsos Mori poll of 4,000 people finds 56% believe investment in the UK from the EU will fall if Britain votes Leave, but 58% think their own standard of living will not be affected in the event of Brexit – a finding the Telegraph reports as “a blow to the assembled forces of Project Fear”.
Diary
- At noon in Bristol, pro-Remainers Amber Rudd and Sir Vince Cable attend an EU event.
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Eddie Izzard is in Edinburgh at 1pm on his Stand Up for Europe tour.
- From 1.45pm, the Vote Leave bus goes to Preston with Boris Johnson and Michael Gove aboard.
- Nigel Farage is on the Ukip battle bus in Leeds during the afternoon.
- And this evening, Ken Livingstone addresses the Oxford Union.
Talking point
Jeremy Corbyn: The Outsider, a 30-minute fly-on-the-wall documentary by Vice News, lands this morning amid reports that advisers had “tense discussions” over the decision to allow the film crew to follow him for several weeks.
In the film, according to a report in the Telegraph, Corbyn’s strategy chief Seumas Milne claims the Labour leader’s attack lines for PMQs are regularly leaked:
It is very annoying because it only happens about a third of the time but it obviously gives them [the government] a little bit of extra time.
Whenever there is a leak it gives them that advantage. It gives them the advantage on TV as well.
Read these
Daniel Finkelstein in the Times (paywall) argues that the lessons of the second world war form a strong argument to stay within the EU:
Boris Johnson and David Cameron have both been attacked for raising questions of war and peace in this campaign, as if nothing could be more hyperbolic and absurd. Yet debating Hitler and armed conflict in Europe could not be more apposite. To believe that the peace we have now in Europe is something we can rely on is incredibly complacent …
To have bound so many warring and scarred states into one strong alliance is a huge achievement. That these countries now share a close legal relationship is a better guarantee of safety than we have ever had.
Priti Patel, writing in the Sun, expands on the Leave campaign’s plan for a points-based immigration scheme:
The automatic right of all EU citizens to come to live, work and claim many benefits in the UK would end. We would choose who we allow into the country on the basis of their skills – without discrimination on the ground of nationality …
It would replace the current system, where anyone who lives in the EU – even if they have a criminal record – has the right to come to Britain.
That may not matter much to the corporate executives in the City, and it certainly doesn’t impact on the foreign politicians and big businessmen who seek to lecture us on how to vote. But it matters to the British people.
Baffling claim of the day
Leave.EU’s breathless tweet that the group “is excited to have learned about BPop Live, a concert organised by Brexit Live on 19 June!” It’s as if they hadn’t heard the kerfuffle about headliners 5ive and Alesha Dixon withdrawing from the event … or prominently endorsed the event on the BPop Live website. Still, Ritchie Neville or no Ritchie Neville, the site entices browsers to buy a ticket by providing zero information on who will be appearing.
Celebrity endorsement of the day
YouGov – which apparently has too much time on its hands – asked its voting panel to judge which of 30 fictional characters would back Brexit and which would remain with Remain. The resounding result was that Geraldine Granger, the Vicar of Dibley, would be most stridently pro-EU, with The Royle Family’s Jim Royle the most enthusiastic Brexiter.
Bob the Builder, the panel concluded, would not yet have made his mind up. Anyone would think he hadn’t seen the latest UK construction figures.
The day in a tweet
Man tries to burn EU flag, can't burn it because of EU directive on flammable materials pic.twitter.com/PkxicDABXC
— Felicity Morse (@FelicityMorse) May 31, 2016
If today were a defunct game show slogan ...
It would be “What do points make? Prizes!” Where the prize is a post-EU UK visa. Or you could play on for the nice family hatchback.
And another thing
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