The pre EU referendum skirmishing stepped up a notch today. Chris Grayling became the first member of the Cabinet to start making the case for Out. While Vote Leave and Stronger In tangled over the question of a second referendum.
As I write in the magazine this week, Vote Leave is increasingly keen on the idea of promising a second referendum on the terms of exit if Britain votes Out. The idea is that this would ‘de-risk’ voting Out and protect the campaign against claims from IN that Britain would get an awful deal from the rest of the EU if it voted to leave.
I understand that George Osborne has used an interview to be broadcast this evening from Berlin, where he is negotiating with the German Finance Minister about Euro In and Outs, to dismiss the idea of a second referendum. This fit with Downing Street’s long standing desire to knock down any talk of a second referendum; they are well aware that if the public felt they could safely vote Out they probably would.
I have been repeatedly told that Cameron and other EU leaders will make clear that a vote for Out means just that, and that Article 50—the two year process by which a country leaves the EU—would be invoked in the event of an Out vote. But Dominic Cummings, Vote Leave’s key strategist, has been busy arguing today that this threat isn’t credible as the Tory party simply wouldn’t allow Cameron to pull the plug like this and his own position would be extremely weak after an Out vote. Cummings says that ‘His leadership successors will make clear they do NOT support immediate A50’.
But Vote Leave’s problem is that it doesn’t have the authority to call a second referendum: it’s not the government. So, if it is going to make this idea—which I suspect voters would find appealing—fly, it needs someone who is a credible potential successor to Cameron, to come out and make the argument for it.
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