David cameron

This EU referendum is a particularly difficult contest to poll and after the general election we all should be wary of treating them as gospel. But there’s no getting away from the fact that the mood in Westminster—and on the two campaigns—is heavily influenced by the polls. The recent good numbers for Leave have put a string in its step. They have also ensured that Vote Leave’s focus on immigration in the last few days isn’t seen as the last roll of the dice but as an attempt to focus on one of its strongest areas. Interestingly, influential figures on the Remain side privately accept that the referendum appears to

The absence of an outline of a post-exit immigration regime is a serious gap in the Referendum debate. That need not be so. There is a fairly clear way ahead: to minimise disruption, while achieving control of numbers. The key element that needs to be controlled is migration for work (which accounts for the bulk of net EU migration). This could be sharply reduced if EU immigrants were subject to the same requirement for work permits as now currently apply to non-EU workers: the aim would be to reduce the overall scale of immigration without losing the economic benefit of highly skilled immigration. By doing this, net migration – 330,000

Although Mark Carney has warned that a Brexit is the ‘biggest domestic risk to financial stability’, his predecessor Mervyn King takes a somewhat different approach when it comes to the impending EU referendum. The former Bank of England governor used an appearance today at the Hay Festival to hit out at the ‘wildly exagerated claims’ made in the run-up to the vote. ‘I wondered who would be the first to lower the tone,’ King joshed when asked whether he thought Britain should stay or go. While he declined to give his voting preference — on the grounds that it could make life difficult for Carney — King did let his disappointment

The IN campaign’s plan for victory in this EU referendum is relatively simple.  ‘Do you want the status quo or the riskt alternative?’, is how one Cameron ally sums it up. To date, Remain—aided by the various government dossiers—have been pretty effective at pushing this message. That is why they are ahead in the polls. So, Vote Leave know that they need to push the risks of staying in, up the agenda. I write in The Sun this morning that their message in the coming weeks will be that ‘wages will be lower and taxes will be higher if stay in the EU’. Their argument will be that the continuing

If you’ve become fed-up with half-baked Treasury statistics, the start of the purdah period is welcome news. The ban on Government and Civil Service resources being used to put forward the case for ‘remain’, means there will be no more of those. But with ‘remain’ having pushed ahead in the polls over the last few weeks, will this now help level the playing field? Based on how the Government has tried to press home the advantage of using its huge resources right up until the last moment, it seems that there are certainly jitters about that happening. Its rather cheeky report put out yesterday evening which suggested that Brexit would

In a speech to Policy Exchange today, Steve Hilton—David Cameron’s former senior adviser—will make the case that ‘any intellectual rigorous examination makes it impossible for a Tory moderniser to support staying in the EU’. He argues that Tory modernisation was about trusting people, and that the EU does not; that modernisation was about localism, and that the EU is inherently centralising; and that the EU helps the rich and not the rest. I think there’s much to be said for Hilton’s analysis. (Though, of course, it should be recognised that there are Tory modernisers on both sides of the argument.) But where Hilton is surely right is that the EU

Steve Hilton coming out so strongly for Brexit is important for two reasons. First, it is a reminder that the idea that, within the Tory party, this referendum is the modernisers versus the right is far too crude. There are Tory modernisers on both sides of this argument. Indeed, given the importance of localism to Tory modernisation and its appreciation that there’s a difference between being pro-big business and pro-market, there are thoroughly modernising reasons for wanting the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. Hilton also details how it was the experience of government that tipped many Tories into backing Brexit. It was the discovery of just how much