James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will Cameron pull his punches to help the Tories reunite?

After the opening skirmishes the ‘inners’ are winning on the economy and the ‘outers’ on immigration

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[/audioplayer] If Downing Street’s calculations are correct, next week will see politics begin to return to normal. We’ll all move on from talking about Boris Johnson and Brexit and instead start fretting about the budget and pensions: the first phase of this four-month referendum campaign will be over. The two sides will regroup and try to work out what they can take from these initial skirmishes. One lesson from the first weeks of the campaign is that the ‘in’ side have the advantage when the debate is on the economy. There are simply too many unanswered question and uncertainties for ‘out’. This is why the No. 10 barrage, which has taken ruthless advantage of its control of the government’s research and communications machine, has concentrated on this aspect of EU membership. The economic argument also plays to Cameron and Osborne’s strengths. The election showed that voters trusted them with the economy, preferring the continuity they were offering to the change that Ed Miliband proposed. The ‘in’ campaign hopes that it can push economic security up the agenda and drive voters towards the reassuring figure of the Prime Minister. As one influential figure on the ‘in’ side puts it: ‘Our polling shows that the majority of peoples’ default position is that they want the economic benefits of staying in.’ There is, though, some concern on the ‘in’ campaign that it has not yet hit upon an economic issue with the resonance that the currency question had in the Scottish referendum. po However, when the focus has been on immigration, ‘out’ has had the better of things. Nothing in Cameron’s EU deal will significantly reduce immigration to Britain — there is, therefore, no chance of the Prime Minister fulfilling his aspiration to reduce net migration to under 100,000.

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