“If we are to maintain public confidence in migration and prevent extremists from dominating the debate, it is essential that elected politicians are accountable for decisions about migration”.
Advertisement
In calling a referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union, Cameron has made a gamble that could end his career – and take his country out of an global alliance it joined more than 40 years ago.
The Prime Minister finally exploded into life mid-way through a BBC Question Time special after an audience member compared him to Nazi appeaser Neville Chamberlain.
Mr Johnson used his weekly column in the Daily Telegraph to say the country was facing a “moment of fundamental decision” with a chance to transform Britain’s democratic arrangements for the better. I think we stay and fight.
“Just like the EU Army is not going to happen, just like the £350million isn’t true”, he said. If Britain wants to leave this organisation, we can.
“I think he’s actually been pretty stunned by the strength of the “leave” cause”, said Cameron biographer James Hanning.
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.
Net migration to the United Kingdom was revealed last month to have hit 333,000 over the previous 12 months, well above Mr Cameron’s aim of being fewer than 100,000.
The Betfred odds on remaining in the European Union are today 1/4 with Britain 3/1 to leave which remarkably are exactly the same as they were 12 months ago when Britain’s biggest independent bookie opened the market.
“You can change the whole course of European history – and if you vote Leave, I believe that change will be overwhelmingly positive”.
“I am sure there are arguments for leaving” he said, but added that it would be a “tragedy” if the United Kingdom voted to leave on the basis of “three things that are completely untrue”.
An exasperated Mr Cameron admitted: “There is no silver bullet on this issue”.
This might have been satisfying for the Prime Minister to deliver, and for his confirmed supporters to watch.
Victoria Honeyman, a lecturer in British politics at the University of Leeds, said Cameron had seen European Union battles poison the leaderships of former Tory leaders John Major and William Hague and “feared a civil war in the Conservative Party”.
“It’s such a strong and simple message about a strong economy”.
Mr Elliott added: “Cameron had no answers to people’s legitimate concerns on immigration tonight and failed to set out how he would meet his manifesto pledge to bring the numbers back down to the tens of thousands while remaining in the EU”.
Vote Leave chief executive Matthew Elliott said Mr Cameron “repeatedly refused” to say he would veto Turkish EU membership and noted that in 2010, the prime minister had said he was “angry” that the country’s progress towards EU membership had been frustrated and would be the “strongest possible advocate” for Turkey joining the EU. He won two elections espousing a fiscally conservative, socially moderate “one-nation Conservatism” that he believes speaks to a large swath of the British public.
Advertisement
“And I don’t think Britain in the end is a quitter”.
