Cameron keeps calm under immigration fire in first EU referendum show

In a feisty interview with Faisal Islam, David Cameron defended his pledge to cut immigration to the tens of thousands but wouldn’t put a date on when he would achieve it. Cameron argued that when the Eurozone economy recovered, he might be able to meet it. Now, this isn’t realistic. The problems with the Eurozone economy are structural and it is impossible to see how net migration could be reduced to the tens of thousands inside the EU; not that getting it down to the tens of thousands outside the EU would be easy—or even desirable.

After the interview, came a series of questions from the audience. Cameron kept his cool under some hostile questioning and gave no hostages to fortune. He kept on trying to bring everything back to the single market and the economic damage he claimed would follow leaving it. He ended with an emotive plea to the audience to look at their kids and grandkids and everyone else dependent on their pay packet before voting.

I suspect that the Remain campaign will be broadly happy with Cameron’s performance; there were no own goals from him tonight. But two things should concern them. First, how hostile the audience were to what they kept describing as the ‘scaremongering’ of the IN campaign. When Faisal Islam asked Cameron will came first the global Brexit recession or World War Three, the audience laughed heartily.

Second, how much anger there was in the audience about government policies unrelated to the referendum. With the Tory vote split on the EU, the IN campaign can’t afford for this to turn into a referendum on the government among the rest of the electorate.