As Prime Minister David Cameron claimed in a speech that EU membership “magnifies” the country’s worldwide standing and that a Brexit would put at risk Europe’s peace and stability, a paper from the Chatham House think-tank said that the risks of leaving the European Union “far outweigh the opportunities”.
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Peace in Europe could be put at risk if Britain votes to leave the EU, David Cameron has warned.
Cameron argued that “isolationism has never served this country well”.
The exchange came as the two sides in the Brexit debate rolled out their big guns, with Boris Johnson launching a Vote Leave battlebus tour in Cornwall, while former PM Gordon Brown used a speech in London to set out what he termed the “patriotic” case for Britain to “lead in Europe, not leave it”.
The campaign before the UK’s in-out referendum is heating up with the local and mayoral elections out of the way and over six week left before the country decides its future relationship with the EU. “Of course he can, and I think he must”.
The government seized on the admission on Sunday by Michael Gove, the intellectual leader of the campaign to leave, that a British exit from the bloc would also mean leaving the single market of the European Union.
‘Is that a risk worth taking?
And 13 former U.S. secretaries of state and defence and national security advisers said Europe would be “dangerously weakened” and cautioned Britain not to believe its close ties with Washington would compensate.
The former prime minister said that a progressive energy policy was best secured throughout European co-operation.
Mr Johnson and other leading Leave campaigners have been seeking to highlight what they say is the paucity of David Cameron’s European Union renegotiation, with former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith arguing the European Union is harming the low paid widening inequality.
“We have always had to go back in, and always at much higher cost. And that requires British leadership and for Britain to remain a member”, Cameron added.
The Leave campaign has alleged the UK’s European Union membership has pushed up energy bills and led to overly onerous environmental regulations that have hampered businesses across the country.
‘The truth is this: what happens in our neighbourhood matters to Britain.
He recalled how former Prime Minister Winston Churchill had argued passionately for Western Europe to come together in the post-war period, to promote free trade, and to build institutions which would endure so that our continent would “never again see such bloodshed”.
It said Brexit would lead to “heightened uncertainty” and slower economic growth, resulting in a possible downgrade to Britain’s sovereign credit rating.
Half of Europeans would like their own countries to hold an in/out EU referendum, according to a new opinion poll.
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“Either we influence Europe, or it influences us”.
