A few weeks ago, James Forsyth revealed David Cameron’s strategy for fighting the EU referendum: to campaign on the theme on security, rather than an economic argument. This is already backfiring badly. Britain’s security does not depend upon the EU, and the Prime Minister’s attempts to suggest otherwise are inflicting grave damage to his chances of winning the referendum.
Yesterday, he threatened Britain with an influx of migrants if we vote to leave. His logic was that the deal agreed with France about policing Sangette was somehow dependent on EU membership. But, being a bilateral deal, it had nothing to do with the EU – as today’s Daily Telegraph reveals. It also reminds us of another claim he made yesterday:-
“If we stay in a reformed EU, you know what you get – a border in Calais and vital information about criminals and terrorists travelling around Europe.”
So the Prime Minister would like us to believe that leaving the EU would somehow lead to the drying up of this “vital information” about terrorists. This is no slip of the tongue: it’s entirely consistent with the ‘security’ strategy agreed some time ago. It’s also utterly untrue.
Let’s leave aside the rather risible notion of Norway being at greater risk from terrorism because EU members refuse to share intelligence with anyone in Oslo. The UK’s closest intelligence network is the Five Eyes – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It’s a classic example of how Britain always strikes global alliances in the national interest: in this case, it’s most fruitful for us to work with English-speaking global alliance, with whom our interests are most closely aligned.
Some 40 years after we joined the EU, the Five Eyes network remains our most important intelligence-gathering network: our surest guarantor against terrorist attacks. Plots tend to originate in places like Pakistan and Syria, and the jihadis could attack anywhere. So we collaborate with allies, but the idea that this has anything to do with the EU is not only untrue but an insult to the intelligence of the voter.
Cameron risks pushing wavering voters into the ‘out’ camp, propelled by disgust at the quality of the arguments for ‘in’. This is precisely how Cameron almost lost Scotland – a ‘Project Fear’ campaign turned a country ambivalent about separation into a SNP one-party state. Andrew Cooper was the chief strategist of the Scottish ‘in’ campaign; he is now doing the same job for the ‘in’ campaign. We can see the same cack-handed techniques, the same attempt at scaring people into voting for the status quo – with the same results.
And I write this as a Europhile, who had hoped – even expected – that Cameron would come up a compelling argument to vote ‘in’. His antics in the last seven days – the inadequate deal, his breaking his own ban on campaigning, his implausible scare stories – have constituted one long advert for ‘out’. At this rate, the Brexit campaign won’t need a leader: Cooper and Cameron are capable of losing this vote all on their own.
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