David Cameron put in a confident, passionate performance tonight in his Question Time grilling. At one point the Prime Minister broke into a forceful rant about Winston Churchill deciding to carry on fighting the war, arguing that Britain shouldn’t quit now, either. It was clearly planned, in fact Cameron rather have the impression that someone in a remote control tower had flicked a switch and turned him into Passionate Orator Mode, a mode so unstoppable that he kept talking over David Dimbleby until he had finished his little speech. It was like a more pumped-up version of the ‘that’s what pumps me up’ speech of the General Election.
This might have been satisfying for the Prime Minister to deliver, and for his confirmed supporters to watch. But Cameron should not be satisfied with the way the programme went overall, because so much of it focused on immigration and Turkey’s accession to the EU.
Audience members lectured him on the failure of his net migration pledge…
…and on the failure of his renegotiation to secure anything that would make a material difference to immigration.
And while Cameron had come prepared to answer questions and to insist that Turkish membership is ‘not going to happen’, it is clear that the different statements that the government has made on this matter over the years have confused voters. The Prime Minister had a good line when he claimed that there may be good arguments to vote leave, but the campaign’s claims about Turkey and the £350 million figure were not among them. But he only has a few days left to reassure undecided voters that staying in is not risky in itself. And spending much of the programme discussing immigration will have made that a little more difficult.
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