David Cameron’s referendum campaign trail continued today, with the Prime Minister visiting Chester and giving a speech defending Britain’s membership of the European Union. And on the other side his Cabinet colleague Chris Grayling gave a speech warning about the dangers of continuing to stay in the bloc.
Neither speech today was particularly angry with the other side – though separately Vote Leave’s Matthew Elliott accused the Prime Minister of being ‘desperate to change the subject from his failure to deliver his manifesto promises on immigration’. Cameron’s main Project Fear theme was to accuse pro-Leave campaigners of seeing job losses as a ‘price worth paying’, and therefore to sow further doubt in voters’ minds about the impact on their own financial security of voting to leave.
He also defended the single market and drew a contrast between Britain’s current negotiating position in the European Union and what negotiating with the EU would look like outside of it.
By contrast, Chris Grayling wanted to warn about the dangers of continued EU membership, arguing this morning that ‘this will not be a simple choice of keeping the status quo’ and that ‘the EU is not a static organisation’. One of the key messages of the Vote Leave campaign – one articulated very well by the Sun story claiming that the Queen believes the EU is heading in the wrong direction – is that the way the bloc is changing means that a Remain vote is risky, too. The question is whether Leave’s own Project Fear can make the same kind of potent warnings about job losses that David Cameron offered today.
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