Eu referendum

If the Leave campaign in the EU referendum was resembling Project Grouch a few weeks ago, today it is rather closer to Project Apoplexy. Vote Leave exploded late last night after ITV announced that it would be holding a live referendum event with David Cameron and Nigel Farage. The campaign group first accused the broadcaster of a ‘stitch-up’, furious that it had capitulated to Number 10’s demands that there be no blue-on-blue fighting on the programme, and picked Nigel Farage, who is not just the member of rival campaign Leave.EU but also a turn-off to the sort of swing voters the Leave bunch actually need to appeal to. Then things

One of the major features of the EU referendum campaign is the suspicion on the part of Tory eurosceptics that their party in government is trying to screw them over. The latest theory centres around the dates when the postal votes are sent out and when the government is forced by official rules governing election campaigns to shut up. The postal votes in the EU referendum are being sent out between 27 May and 3 June, and the official ‘purdah’ for the campaign also begins on 27 May. Given Leave campaigners are expecting a considerable bulk of the votes in this referendum to be cast by post, a number of Tory MPs

With the May elections over, the EU referendum campaign is now in full swing. David Cameron started the day warning that Brexit could put peace in Europe at risk. In his speech at the British Museum this morning, the PM also asked whether leaving the EU was a risk worth taking. Here’s what he said: Boris hit back by making his case for voting out, saying that negotiating on behalf of the EU is like ‘trying to ride a vast 28-man pantomime horse’: He also sung ‘Ode to Joy’ in German: And Boris even appeared to forget the name of the city which, until a few days ago, he was

Sir John Sawers, an ex-MI6 chief, insisted to Andrew Marr earlier that No10 did not put him up writing today’s article in the Sunday Times saying that Britain needs the EU to ensure its security. I can quite believe it. No10 abandoned this line of argument after the Belgian Airport atrocity, and the subsequent debate which exposed how EU-wide security does not work. We saw, then, that geographical proximity is terrifyingly unrelated to the quality of intelligence collaboration. The French and Belgians were unable to exchange information about terror suspects, in spite of having a common border and common language. If you rely on institutions that don’t work, you put lives

The comparison between the referendum questions — that asked in 1975 and the one which we shall be asked on 23 June — is interesting. In 1975, the question was ‘Do you think that the United Kingdom should remain part of the European Community (Common Market)?’ (Answer: Yes/No). Today, the question will be ‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of European Union or leave the European Union?’ (Answer: Remain/Leave). The modern question is the fairer, and it also brings out how things have changed. In 1975, it seemed almost obvious that the answer was ‘yes’: even many who did not like EEC entry could see it was strange to leave only

‘England in effect is insular, she is maritime, she is linked through her interactions, her markets and her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries; she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities, and only slight agricultural ones. She has, in all her doings, very marked and very original habits and traditions.’ This classic Eurosceptic statement was made, as Daniel Hannan reminds us in his excellent book Why Vote Leave, by a great European, Charles de Gaulle. He was explaining why France was rejecting our attempt to join the EEC in 1963. The General understood what the European project was, and why Britain was not a