Sarah Wollaston’s defection to Remain is a blow to the Leave campaign, whatever some of its supporters might say. The Tory MP is notoriously independently-minded, and unafraid of changing her mind, too, which makes her a rare species in Westminster. She is also totally uninterested in a government job, which makes it more difficult for her former allies to claim that she is just jumping ship in order to gain a cosy ministerial position. And Leave made a big song and dance about signing her up in the first place, which makes it even more difficult to claim that her change of heart means nothing.
What is particularly damaging is that the Health Select Committee chair has chosen to defect over the campaign’s claim that Brexit would free up £350 million a week for the NHS. ‘For someone like me who has long campaigned for open and honest data in public life I could not have set foot on a battle bus that has at the heart of its campaign a figure that I know to be untrue,’ she writes this morning.
Mind you, she may find some of the figures bandied about by Remain equally uncomfortable: George Osborne had a tricky time last night explaining the £4,300 figure that the Treasury likes to scare voters with about the hit to each household that Brexit would cause.
But the NHS figure is not the most powerful tool that Leave has deployed in this campaign. That’s Turkey, which George Osborne came to the BBC studios last night determined to diminish as an issue. He had a jolly good go, but not even a high-profile defection on another issue will distract from the fact that immigration and Turkish accession are gaining huge traction with voters – and Remain only has a few days in which to counter that.
The Spectator Podcast
Christopher Meyer, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the first 100 days of Brexit
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