Afternoon summary
- Cameron has accused Brexit campaigners of offering “guesswork at a time we need facts”. He made the comment in a speech in which he also claimed that some of those campaigning for Britain to leave the EU thought job losses and economic disruption were a price worth paying. (See 2.29pm.)
- The west’s leading economic thinktank has provided backing for David Cameron’s pro-EU stance by warning that a UK vote to leave the union would cause lasting damage and would harm the rest of the world. As Larry Elliott reports, Catherine Mann, the chief economist at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, said a no vote would be “bad for the UK, bad for Europe and bad for the global economy”.Speaking in London on Thursday, Mann said she was not convinced by the argument made by Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, that the long-term benefits of departure would outweigh short-term costs.
- Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP and son of the former leader Neil Kinnock, has said that Labour needs “a big jump forward” in the English council elections for Jeremy Corbyn to be sure of staying on as leader. In an interview with the Huffington Post Common People podcast, he said the May elections would go a long way towards showing whether Corbyn was a potential prime minister. He said:
The big question is when people look at him do they see somebody who could be the next prime minister of the United Kingdom and I think we will know a large part of the answer to that question following the elections on May 5 and also how the Labour party carries itself now through to the 23rd June and the referendum. Jeremy, as any leader, gets judged on performance, gets judged on results, so until we see what those results are opinion polls – as we saw with the 2015 election – they are not worth the paper they’re written on.
Asked what a successful result for Labour would be, Kinnock replied:
We need a Labour mayor in London. We need a big jump forward in the council elections in England, we need in Wales to hold on well to Government. I think Scotland – very, very problematic – but we need as an absolute minimum to be coming in as a second party in Scotland.
And asked whether failure to achieve those successes would raise questions about Corbyn’s leadership, he replied:
Absolutely, I think any leader of any political party is judged by their results and we need to set ambitious, challenging targets for what we want to achieve in May. If we’re not reaching those targets then of course questions need to be asked.
Corbyn’s supporters may be alarmed by the benchmarks Kinnock is setting because one academic analysis earlier this year said Labour was on course to lose seats in the council elections, and polls suggest Labour will lose its majority in the Welsh assembly.
- Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, has said leaving the EU would undermine efforts to tackle people trafficking. She told the Times (paywall):
By definition trafficking people in and out of the country is an international issue. Most cases will involve some international work. Leaving Europe would undermine our efforts and be damaging to it.
- Sir Kevin Barron, the chairman of the Commons standards committee has stood aside from his post amid an investigation into whether he broke rules by hosting events for a drugs firm. As the Press Association reports, Barron has referred himself to the independent commissioner Kathryn Hudson after The Daily Telegraph reported that he received fees for sponsoring dinners and a breakfast on the parliamentary estate.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Updated
Do Brexit campaigners really think job losses are a price worth paying?
Chris Grayling said David Cameron was wrong to say that some Brexit campaigners thought job losses and other economic problems were a price worth paying for leaving the EU. (See 2.29pm.) But Britain Stronger in Europe have put out a list of quotes apparently proving Cameron’s case.
They include:
Aaron Banks, the Leave.EU co-founder, saying: “There must be penalties for leaving. There must be penalties for leaving. I don’t disagree with that, there will be pain. It’s like a divorce, there’s going to be a break-up, there’s going to be pain.”
Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, saying in the Times (paywall): “[It would be] like the Nike tick [with] an initial period of dislocation and uncertainty . . . followed by very rapid improvement”.
John Whittingdale, the culture secretary, saying: “I am not going to pretend that there aren’t potentially some costs, obviously there may be some costs. I am not going to pretend that there aren’t uncertainties.”
In fact, Grayling and Cameron have both got a point. Many Brexit campaigners have admitted that leaving the EU would cause short-term disruption of some kind (economists are almost unanimous on this point), but generally they argue that it would be worth it because of the long-term economic gains.
Interestingly one prominent Brexit campaigner has argued that, even if leaving the EU did make Britain poorer in the long run, it would still be worth it. That was Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader. This is what he said in January 2014.
If you said to me, would I like to see over the next ten years a further five million people come in to Britain and if that happened we’d all be slightly richer, I’d say, I’d rather we weren’t slightly richer, and I’d rather we had communities that were united and where young unemployed British people had a realistic chance of getting a job.
I think the social side of this matters more than pure market economics.
At the time that was seen as a brave thing to say. (How often does a politician go into an election saying, ‘I’ll make you poorer.’) But Jon Cruddas, who was in charge of Labour’s policy review at the time, said it was heartening to hear a politician acknowledge that there was more to life than economic growth and GDP.
Updated
David Lammy has offered an apology for the way his campaign made unauthorised calls to potential supporters during the Labour mayoral candidate election campaign. (See 10.41am.)
I fully accept the information commissioner’s decision and apologise unreservedly to any Labour party member or registered supporter that felt upset at receiving an automated call from my campaign.
If I had known that additional permission was required to make automated calls then I would have sought it before any calls were made.
Q: Do you think the Leave campaign are right to use the Queen for their own ends?
Cameron says he has said all he wants to say about this issue. We should let the new press regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organisation, do its work, he says.
And that’s it. The Q&A is over.
Cameron says there has been a renaissance in the British car industry recently. It is doing well. It’s a success story, partly because firms know they have access to the single market.
Q: How can you be sure jobs would be lost and businesses close if Britain left the EU? Isn’t that hypothetical?
Cameron says we know that 3m jobs are linked to the EU, and that we benefit from trade deals and access to the single market.
He says the Out camp cannot say what the rules would be if we left, what trade deals there might be, and what the tariffs might be.
There is a contrast between that certainty and the uncertainty.
We are not getting answers from them.
And it is not good enough for them to say, whenever someone raises these questions, for Leave to dismiss this as scaremongering.
Don’t swap the “certainty of success for the uncertainty and risk”, he says.
Cameron's Q&A
Q: You cannot tell us what the Queen thinks about the EU. If a minister were found to be behind the leak to the Sun, would they have to resign?
Cameron says that would be “very serious”. But there have been statements from Buckingham Palace, and people who were there have said they do not know where the story came from.
- Cameron says it would be “very serious” if a minister were found to be responsible for the Queen Brexit leak.
Cameron is now using the passage accusing Brexit campaigners of thinking economic damage would be “a price worth paying”. (See 2.29pm.)
Cameron says the Treasury will be putting out a full analysis of the potential costs of leaving the EU.
Cameron accuses Leave campaign of putting out 'guesswork at a time we need facts'
Cameron says the Brexit campaigners say Britain would be able to strike free trade deals with other countries. But that is “guesswork”, he says.
On trade deals Leave campaign putting out "guesswork at a time we need facts" says PM
— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) March 10, 2016
Cameron says it can take years to negotiate trade deals.
He says there is no guarantee that trade deals would be concluded before Britain left the EU.
And he says countries like America would rather conclude trade deals with a regional bloc like the EU.
Updated
Cameron says the EU/US trade deal will help British firms break into the US market.
Cameron says having the best free trade deal in the world with the EU would still not be as good for the UK as being in the single market, because of the effect of non-tariff barriers.
PM: "best free trade in the world would still not replicate Single Market" because of non-tariff barriers, could cost £50bn, he claims
— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) March 10, 2016
Sky News are not showing Cameron’s speech live, and BBC News has just cut away. You can understand why. This is quite heavy going.
Never mind. We’ve got a live feed (at the top of this blog) and I’ll keep going.
Cameron says Britain does not sell any beef to America because of restrictions that are 20 years old. That shows how important it is being able to influence trade rules, he says.
Cameron says the Leave campaigners say that if you claim Britain would not get a good trade deal with the EU, you are talking Britain down.
Cameron says he wants to present the facts. Britain would be just one country negotiating with 27 others. And a larger proportion of British trade goes to the EU than EU trade goes to Britain.
PM: "If Britain votes to leave, would be one nation negotiating with 27, Britain selling 50% of its good to EU, versus EU selling 7% to us"
— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) March 10, 2016
Updated
Cameron says Norway has almost full access to the single market. But they pay for access to the single market, and they have no say over the regulations in force.
Some people say the UK could have a free trade deal like the one Canada has negotiated with the EU.
But their free trade agreement does not mean the elimination of all tariffs. Some tariffs still apply, he says.
That might be acceptable for Canada. But it would not be acceptable for UK, because a greater proportion of its trade is with the EU.
PM: Canada's FTA would NOT work for Britain. Half of 1,400 page agreement is exemptions from free trade.
— Stronger In Press (@StrongerInPress) March 10, 2016
Updated
Cameron says 3m jobs are linked to the UK being in the EU.
And, during this renegotiation, he got assurances about extending the single market further into the services sector, he says. He says this is important because services are the biggest part of the economy.
David Cameron kicks off his EU speech at a Vauxhall factory at Ellesmere Port pic.twitter.com/NbouIr7JJe
— Frances Perraudin (@fperraudin) March 10, 2016
Cameron says some Leave campaigners say that being in the EU amounts to being “shackled to a corpse”.
But it does not feel like that to people working in factories selling cars to the EU, he says.
Cameron says the single market allows goods to be sold in the EU without tariffs.
If that were not the case, cars sold in Europe would cost 10% more, he says.
PM: For every 100 cars we make here, 44 go to Europe. Not just because of proximity but because they're 10% less expensive because tariff=0%
— Stronger In Press (@StrongerInPress) March 10, 2016
(He is speaking at a car factory.)
Charming his audience at @vauxhall: 'I've been to many of your competitors but I've saved the best til last' says PM pic.twitter.com/dFir771jYn
— Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) March 10, 2016
Updated
Cameron's EU speech
David Cameron is giving his speech now.
He says, as people debate EU membership, they want the facts.
So he will explain how the single market works, he says.
He says the Leave campaign have not been able to explain what would happen if Britain left.
On one side, there are facts about how Britain being in a reformed EU makes it better off.
On the other side there are “unanswered questions”.
Grayling rejects Cameron's claim that Brexit campaigners think job losses 'a price worth paying'
According to the excerpts released in advance, David Cameron will use his speech this afternoon to accuse some Brexit campaigners of believing that the economic damage caused by Brexit would be “a price worth paying”. Cameron will say:
For those who advocate leaving, lost jobs and a dented economy might be collateral damage, or a price worth paying. For me, they’re not. They never are because there’s nothing more important than protecting people’s financial security. That’s why I believe we are better off in.
In interview this morning Chris Grayling, the leader of the Commons and a prominent Out campaigner, said Cameron was misrepresenting the Leave camp’s position. Asked about Cameron’s claim, Grayling said:
That is simply not true. It is about creating the opportunity for more jobs. European Union regulations cost jobs in this country. They increase costs for business. They make it less desirable to employ people in the UK.
Lunchtime summary
- David Cameron has rejected claims by anti-EU Conservatives that a short, sharp economic shock if Britain voted to leave the EU on 23 June would be a “price worth paying” for gaining freedom from Brussels. He made the comment in extracts released in advance from a speech he is giving early this afternoon. I will be covering the speech itself in detail later.
- The government has announced that the Queen’s Speech will go ahead on Wednesday 18 May, five weeks ahead of the EU referendum. Labour has said this would be a “profound mistake”. (See 11.09am.)
- Cameron has rejected calls for an official investigation into the leak of reported comments made by the Queen on the EU. Wes Streeting, a Labour MP, has called for an inquiry on the grounds that the leak seems to have come from a member of the privy council. Cameron rejected this proposal. He told BBC Sussex:
The Palace has made a very clear statement, the former deputy prime minister has made a very clear statement saying that this didn’t happen and I think we should leave it at that. There is obviously a proper investigation now being held by the press complaints commission and I think we should let them do their work.
Cameron also said he accepted Michael Gove’s statement that he was not responsible for the leak. (See 10.24am.)
- Chris Grayling, the leader of the Commons, has said Cameron’s EU renegotiation may have left the UK “in a worse position than before”. (See 1.06pm.)
- Dan Jarvis, the Labour backbencher widely touted as a potential challenger to Jeremy Corbyn, has warned that working people want a Labour party that does not just “oppose the government” but beats it. As Anushka Asthana reports, Jarvis, the former paratrooper who is known to have been raising money from former Labour donors, denied that his words should be taken as a critique of the current leadership. He argued that Corbyn had called for debate within the party.The speech on Thursday at the thinktank Demos will be seen as Jarvis taking on criticism that he is too far to the right, positioning himself on the soft left of the party.
Chris Grayling's EU speech - Summary
Here are the key points from Chris Grayling, the leader of the Commons’, Vote Leave speech this morning.
- Grayling said that David Cameron’s EU renegotiation may have left the UK “in a worse situation than before”.
Nothing about this has changed as a result of the agreement three weeks ago.
In fact we may be in a worse situation than we were before. As Peter Lilley and several of my Parliamentary colleagues pointed out yesterday in The Times, one of the inadvertent consequences of the renegotiation discussions is that we have agreed that Britain “shall not impede the implementation of legal acts directly linked to the functioning of the euro area”. This is a significant – and underappreciated - loss of leverage. We now lack a key tool in preventing further EU integration - which we might be dragged along into.
And the routine process of integration is not going to stop here. It does not need new treaties or agreements to carry on the process of harmonisation. The wording of the Lisbon Treaty and the almost unlimited scope of the Charter of Fundamental Rights give the EU institutions carte blanche to expand into more and more areas of competence. For all the talk about subsidiarity, the opposite is actually true.
- He said EU leaders wanted “full political and economic union” by 2025. This was not what Britain wanted, he said.
The EU is not a static organisation. The journey is continuing. Senior political figures from all over Europe are talking about and planning for the EU to take another big step towards full political and economic union. A target date has been set – of 2025.
And we as a nation agree that they have little choice but to do so. If the Eurozone is to survive, it will have to unify, with decisions about things like retirement age taken at an international level, with rules around the management of financial systems, of tax system, and a range of other government responsibilities.
- He said Cameron’s renegotiation did nothing to reduce the supremacy of the European court of justice, to alter EU voting rules or to change the Lisbon treaty.
- He said the UK “very rarely” was able to block EU proposals under the qualified majority rules.
Voting in the EU institutions is weighted by size of country. The United Kingdom has 29 votes out of 352. To simply block a policy from happening we have to assemble an alliance of countries amounting to more than 35% of the population of the EU. We rarely succeed in doing so, and even when we do, all too often the Commission manages to buy someone off with a concession elsewhere, and the blocking minority collapses.
The UK has never been on the winning side when we have challenged the Commission in a vote in the Council.
- He said the UK tended to lose at the European court of justice.
Britain tends to lose in the Court when we challenge decisions that would further undermine our national sovereignty. We have only won about 23% of the time when we have sought redress from the Court. More Europe tends to win the day.
- He praised Cameron for making a “Herculean” effort to achieve reform in the EU, but that it was impossible to get Brussels to accept real change.
I think the prime minister made a herculean effort in Brussels three weeks ago. I don’t believe that anyone could have put in more effort than he did to get to this point. I don’t believe that he could have secured more from the EU than he did three weeks ago. But that’s exactly the point.
Here is the full text of Chris Grayling’s speech to Vote Leave this morning.
I will post a summary shortly.
Crowds at this weekend’s St Patrick’s Day parade in London will be leafleted by a new group aiming to bolster support for Britain remaining the EU by going after the votes of hundreds of thousands of Irish people in the UK.
The organisers of Irish4Europe, which launched today at Westminster, also said that they would be drawing inspiration from the ‘ring your granny’ campaign which mobilised voters during Ireland’s gay marriage referendum.
The group is backed by the European Movement – a cross party pro-EU lobbying organisation – which has provided its initial funding.
As well as voicing their concerns about the potential impact from a ‘Brexit’ on trade between Ireland and Britain, the future of the open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, speakers spoke of their worries about “social and cultural unknowns,” the impact on Irish migrants in Britain and the future of the Common Travel Area (CTA) which means that there are no passport controls in operation for Irish and UK citizens.
“If this referendum is lost, a big chunk of the reason for that will be about fears over immigration,” said a member of the group’s steering committee, Brian O’Connell, the UK Director of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce.
“Certainly, a future British government would look at tightening borders. There is no way that the CTA could possibly continue to exist. We have no idea what would happen to the land border. At the moment there are huge question marks and no body can say with certainty what would happen.”
Boris Johnson said last month that he does not believe the Irish border would be affected if the UK left the European Union, arguing that a Brexit would leave arrangements on the Irish border “absolutely unchanged”.
Other figures on Irish4Europe’s steering committee include Rory Godson, the chief executive of the influential City PR company Powerscourt as well as Laura Sandys, Chair of the European Movement and a former Europhile Conservative MP.
More than 400,000 Irish-born people were living in England and Wales at the time of the 2011 census, in addition to a further 23,000 in Scotland. Tens of thousands of mostly younger Irish people have also moved to Britain since the 2008 economic crisis.
The group has produced literature telling Irish citizens that their ability to travel and work freely between Britain and Ireland could be restricted by a Brexit, adding: “Irish people currently enjoy a more favourable status than citizens of other EU countries who live in Britain.”
Updated
Nato has for years set a target for its members of spending 2% of GDP on defence, and Nato leaders reaffirmed this at the Nato summit in Wales in September 2014.
The UK has spent more than 2% of GDP on defence since records began, as this briefing paper explains (pdf). However defence spending as a proportion of GDP was drifting downwards in the last parliament, and by 2014 it hit 2.2%. The issue became contentious in the run-up to the general election because David Cameron refused explicitly to commit the government to meeting the 2% target in the 2015-20 (although some of us felt that he was only doing so to keep open the option of using this as a bargaining chip in talks with other parties in the event of a hung parliament; a 2% commitment would have appealed strongly to the DUP.) George Osborne subsequently announced in the summer budget last year that the government would meet the 2% target for the rest of this parliament.
We knew that President Obama told Cameron last year that Britain should meet the 2% target. But I don’t think we knew he had been this explicit about the UK losing its ‘special relationship’ with the US if it did not.
Obama 'told Cameron UK would lose special relationship with US if it did not spend 2% of GDP on defence'
In the US the Atlantic has published a very long interview/profile about President Obama.
It says that Obama told David Cameron that the UK would lose its “special relationship” with the US if it did not agree to spend 2% of its GDP on defence (the Nato target). Cameron subsequently confirmed that the government would do this.
Here’s the key passage.
If Obama ever questioned whether America really is the world’s one indispensable nation, he no longer does so. But he is the rare president who seems at times to resent indispensability, rather than embrace it. “Free riders aggravate me,” he told me. Recently, Obama warned that Great Britain would no longer be able to claim a “special relationship” with the United States if it did not commit to spending at least 2 percent of its GDP on defense. “You have to pay your fair share,” Obama told David Cameron, who subsequently met the 2 percent threshold.
Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP
Grayling says Cameron's EU renegotiation may have left UK 'in a worse situation than before'
Here is a key quote from Chris Grayling’s speech this morning about David Cameron’s EU renegotiation.
We may be in a worse situation than we were before. As Peter Lilley and several of my Parliamentary colleagues pointed out yesterday in The Times, one of the inadvertent consequences of the renegotiation discussions is that we have agreed that Britain “shall not impede the implementation of legal acts directly linked to the functioning of the euro area”. This is a significant – and underappreciated - loss of leverage. We now lack a key tool in preventing further EU integration - which we might be dragged along into.
And the routine process of integration is not going to stop here. It does not need new treaties or agreements to carry on the process of harmonisation. The wording of the Lisbon Treaty and the almost unlimited scope of the Charter of Fundamental Rights give the EU institutions carte blanche to expand into more and more areas of competence. For all the talk about subsidiarity, the opposite is actually true.
I will post a full summary from his speech soon.
Updated
In his response to Chris Bryant at business questions, Chris Grayling, the leader of the Commons, said he did not understand Bryant’s complaint about the timing of the Queen’s speech. (See 11.09am.)
One moment he’s talking about a zombie parliament with nothing to do. Now he’s complaining we are going to have a Queen’s Speech in May with another important set of measures to bring forward to help reform this country.
Labour says holding Queen's Speech 5 weeks before EU referendum 'a profound mistake'
In the Commons Chris Byrant, the shadow leader of the Commons, has just said that holding the Queen’s speech only five weeks before the EU referendum would be “a profound mistake”.
The decision to hold the Queen’s Speech on 18 May is a profound mistake. Whatever the government’s intentions, they will be misconstrued. We have already seen that the Brexit campaign are now so desperate that they are even trying to recruit members of the Royal Family to their cause. So I say lay off the Queen, and think again.
Updated
Queen's speech to be held on Wednesday 18 May
Chris Grayling, the leader of the Commons, has just told MPs that the Queen’s Speech will be on Wednesday 18 May.
Big announcement from @CommonsLeader that the State Opening of Parliament (Queen's Speech) will be Weds 18 May
— Labour Whips (@labourwhips) March 10, 2016
There had been reports saying the government was planning to delay the Queen’s Speech until after the EU referendum on 23 June.
David Lammy fined up to £5,000 for nuisance calls during Labour mayoral candidate campaign
The Labour MP David Lammy has been fined because his campaign made what are deemed nuisance calls when he was trying to win the Labour nomination as candidate for London mayor. The Press Association has the details.
A Labour MP has been fined up to £5,000 after making 35,000 nuisance calls during an abortive bid to be the party’s London mayoral candidate.
The calls, which played a recorded message urging people to back David Lammy’s campaign, were placed over just two days last August.
Information commissioner Christopher Graham found Lammy broke privacy rules because he did not have permission to contact the individuals.
Graham said: “The rules apply to political groups canvassing for votes in the same way they apply to salespeople offering a discount on double glazing. If you want to call someone in this way, you must follow these rules. Mr Lammy did not, and that is why he has been fined.
“It’s not good enough to assume the people you’re contacting probably won’t mind. The law requires you to have permission before making calls with recorded messages. And if the law isn’t followed, the regulator will act.”
If Lammy pays by April 5 the fine will be reduced to £4,000.
Cameron's interviews - Summary
Here are the key points from David Cameron’s radio interviews.
- Cameron said that he would remain in parliament after the 2020 general election even after standing down as prime minister. Asked about staying on as MP for Witney, he replied:
I love being MP for Witney and am very keen to continue.
When asked if that meant he would seek re-election as MP for Witney in 2020, he replied:
That is very much my intention.
But Cameron could have just said “Yes”. His decision to reply to the question in this way may fuel suspicions that he is planning to do a Tony Blair, and leave the Commons when he leaves Downing Street.
- He said that he accepted Michael Gove’s claim that he was not the source of the Sun’s story about the Queen’s thinking on Europe. When it was put to Cameron that he would have to sack Gove if he were the source, Cameron replied:
Obviously these are very serious matters but, as far as I can see, Michael Gove has made clear that he has no idea where this story came from either. So you have got a very clear denial, a statement from Buckingham Palace and from the [former] deputy prime minister, an investigation underway from the press standards organisation, and I think we should let them do their work.
My mother is a citizen and a voter and she’s got every right to make her views known. I took exactly the same view. I thought Oxfordshire county council’s original proposals on children’s centres were wrong. I’m glad that they have been amended.
- He would not comment on the Queen’s views on the EU.
Cameron says he plans to stand for election again as an MP in 2020 after he stops being prime minister
Q: Your mother signed a petition against cuts affecting children’s centres in Oxfordshire. What was your view on that?
Cameron says his mother is a citizen. She is entitled to express her views. He says he agreed. He thought the council should not have been cutting frontline services. He says he made this point in a letter to the council.
Q: You won’t stand for election as prime minister again. But will you stand for election again as MP for Witney?
Cameron says he loves being MP for Witney. He says that is his intention.
- Cameron says he plans to stand for election again as an MP in 2020 after he stops being prime minister.
Updated
Cameron is on Radio Oxford now.
Q: Won’t it be difficult if the Queen leak came from a minister at a privy council meeting?
Cameron says the Independent Press Standards Organisation is looking into this. That should continue.
Q: It has been suggested Michael Gove was the source.
Cameron says Gove has denied that.
Updated
David Cameron is doing some local radio interviews at the moment.
He is on Radio Sussex now. And he has been asked about the Sun’s story about the Queen.
Cameron tells local BBC radio that he can say nothing of the queen's private views on EU and highlights Clegg's dismissal of the Sun account
— Rowena Mason (@rowenamason) March 10, 2016
And here is some Twitter comment on Tony Gallagher’s interview.
From the media commentator Raymond Snoddy
Good that Sun editor Tony Gallagher defended himself on Today programme but gap between Queen text and Brexit headline still appears great
— Raymond Snoddy (@RaymondSnoddy) March 10, 2016
From the Financial Times’s Jim Pickard
So @tonygallagher claims it is "semantics" whether Queen criticising EU = Queen wanting Brexit. I would say it is the heart of the argument.
— Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) March 10, 2016
From the broadcaster and former Mirror editor Piers Morgan
Just listened to @TheSun editor @tonygallagher on @BBCRadio4.
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) March 10, 2016
Very convincing re Queen/Europe scoop. It's obviously true.
From the Guardian’s Michael White
"Brexit Queen": Sun editor Tony Gallagher is much smarter than the average bear/editor/reader. But on R4 he keeps digging. Dig, dig, dig...
— MichaelWhite (@MichaelWhite) March 10, 2016
Tony Gallagher's Today interview - Summary
Here is more from Tony Gallagher, the Sun editor’s, interview with the Today programme about his splash yesterday saying the Queen “backs Brexit”. As I said earlier (see 8.37am), he said he was “completely confident” the story was true. Here are some other points he made.
- Gallagher dismissed as “semantics” a complaint about the fact that Queen’s comments about the EU used to justify the Sun’s headline were made years before the EU referendum was announced. Gallagher said the paper had two sources who had revealed what the Queen had said on two separate occasions: at a lunch attended by Nick Clegg and others in 2011, and at a reception that the paper says took place “a few years ago”. When Sarah Montague put it to him that 2011 was well before the referendum had been called, and that the Queen might have a different view now, he replied:
I think that’s semantics. In 2011 it is pretty clear that the eurozone was in the midst of a huge crisis and it would be entirely unsurprising if her majesty had views on the matter and felt Britain’s destiny was best served outside of the European Union.
When Montague again put it to him that there was a difference between disparaging the EU five years ago and wanting to leave now, Gallagher replied:
I think that’s semantics. We did not hide the fact that the lunch was in 2011. The story stands and is accurate. I’m confident that the story is completely right.
- He refused to say whether Michael Gove was the source of the story. But he implied Gove was being blamed because people wanted to undermine him as a Leave spokesman. He said:
I’m not going to tell you the precise details of the second occasion [when the Queen criticised the EU] because all it will do is set off a rather absurd molehunt in the fashion of today’s newspapers which are seeking to name Michael Gove. It would be very unfair to the sources who have spoken to us quite bravely ...
You wouldn’t expect me for a single moment to reveal anything about the source of the story in the Sun. Those of a cynical mind would think there’s an attempt to take somebody like Michael Gove out of the leave campaign. And the fact that [former deputy prime minister] Nick Clegg and [Labour MP] Wes Streeting have been on their hind legs complaining about it vociferously would rather point in that direction.
The Telegraph’s splash today names Gove as a suspect for the leak.
Thursday's Telegraph front page:
— Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) March 9, 2016
Gove faces 'Queen Brexit' questions#tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers pic.twitter.com/4iCW4NFcza
- Gallagher said he did not mind causing trouble with his story because it was not the Sun’s job to serve “the elite”.
The fact that the story is inconvenient for a good number of people is not my fault. We serve our readers, not the elite who might be upset at what we’ve written. We are completely confident that the Queen’s views were expressed exactly as we’ve outlined in both the headline and the story.
Here is the Guardian’s full story about this.
Updated
David Cameron and Chris Grayling are both giving what are being billed as substantial speeches on the EU referendum today - anti-Brexit and pro-Brexit respectively, of course - but what they say may be overshadowed by the rather juicier row about or not the Sun was entitled yesterday in saying that the Queen is in the Out camp.
This morning Tony Gallagher, the Sun’s editor, was on the Today programme defending his paper’s story. Crucially he insisted that it was not just the story that was accurate; he said the headline (which said the Queen “backs Brexit”, going beyond the story itself, which just said she was critical of the EU some years ago) was true too. He told the programme:
Multiple sources - two sources to be precise - came to us with information about the Queen and her views on the EU and we would have been derelict in our duty if we didn’t put them in the paper. It’s as simple as that.
You are going to have to take my word for it that we are completely confident that the Queen’s views were expressed exactly as we have outlined them both in the headline and the story.
It is also the case that we knew much more than we published and that remains the case.
We are in no doubt that the story is accurate.
I will post more on the interview shortly.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: Chris Grayling, the leader of the Commons, gives a speech on “how the prime minister’s renegotiation won’t return powers to the UK parliament”.
9.30am: The Labour MP Dan Jarvis gives a speech on Labour’s future.
10am: Lord Adonis, chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, publishes a London infrastructure report.
Afternoon: David Cameron gives a speech on Europe.
As usual I will also be covering the breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I will post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.
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