What David Cameron won’t be saying about the Brexit referendum

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“As Prime Minister, I believe staying in the European Union is best for our country and I will explain why with facts and evidence between now and the June 23 referendum. I am humble enough to recognise that I am not a clairvoyant. So I cannot predict with absolute certainty what will happen if we stay in, or leave the EU. Let me also make clear I respect those with different views. We must conduct this important debate with candour and civility, free of scare campaigns and chicanery that have become familiar ploys of EU leaders. I will not succumb to the arrogance of so many Europhiles who assume they know better than the people. Democracy demands that the British people decide this important issue armed with the best information.”

David Cameron, Prime Minister of Britain.

Actually, the British Prime Minister said no such thing. But he should have. Instead, as Britain debates whether to remain in or leave the European Union, Cameron sounds like a prototype member of the EU elite rummaging through the bag of familiar EU tricks. Rather than humility, an imperious Cameron has chosen to insult the intelligence and integrity not just of his opponents but of the British people.

If British voters decide to leave the EU, it will signal they have had a gutful of EU contempt for the people, especially when it comes from their own PM. They will be rejecting scaremongering claims from a government dossier that if Britain leaves the EU, it won’t be able to defend itself from criminals, killers, pedophiles, pornography rings and terrorists. Yet, there’s been nary a word from the “stay” side about the open borders that allow criminals direct and easy access to Britain.

Equally, Cameron’s claim that only the EU can provide stability in Europe insults the intelligence of voters who remember the Balkans in 1991. They might remember EU leaders then declaring this was “the hour of Europe” only for the EU to utterly fail to stop mass slaughter and genocide.

Voters might also wonder how on earth Cameron’s so-called deal with Europe will stem the rising number of migrants flooding into Britain. Last week, net migration stood at 327,000 with claims that official numbers under-represent the real situation.

Voters might also reject the flimsy economic case put forward by Cameron. After all, EU countries export more to Britain than vice versa. So why would any EU country impede its own trading with Britain? Voters might also ignore a bunch of G20 leaders who have joined Cameron’s “stay” side, instead agreeing with former chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson when he said: “Fifteen of the members of the G20 are outside the EU, and that hasn’t caused an economic shock. Indeed, most of them are doing better than most of the members of the European Union.”

Similarly, voters might snub the preaching from big businesses opposed to Brexit who signed a collective letter orchestrated by No 10. Maybe voters will prefer the respect shown by those large businesses that refused to sign the letter because, as they said, this is a matter for the British people.

Brits might look darkly on a Prime Minister who claims he has secured a game-changing reform package with the EU. Tinkering over welfare benefits is not fundamental reform of Britain’s relationship with the EU.

And why has Cameron claimed his Brussels deal is watertight but refused to release legal advice that apparently supports his claim? Voters might question how the British Prime Minister can possibly know that a handful of judges on the European Court of Justice won’t meddle in this deal, just as they have meddled into other matters. After all, he’s not a clairvoyant.

Voters are entitled to question other parts of what some have dubbed Project Fear. Cameron and the “stay with Europe” side claim that Brits will pay more for holidays and mobile phone charges, British goods will be more expensive and jobs will be lost if Britain leaves the EU. And will British voters really fall for Cameron’s other scare tactic that the only person who wants Britain to leave the EU is Putin?

Voters might also look dimly upon Cameron’s attacks against the Mayor of London, who, after much deliberation decided to support Brexit. Boris Johnson’s press conference was deferential to, even reverential of, Cameron. Yet Cameron’s response in the House of Commons was vitriolic, insulting and full of mockery. British people might wonder whether a Prime Minister who mocks Johnson, the six cabinet ministers and the 40 per cent of Tory MPs who want Britain to leave Europe, is also mocking the British people who support Brexit or haven’t yet made up their mind. Reports that opposing ministers are being denied departmental information concerning the EU and, worse, might be sacked in a post-referendum reshuffle will only feed voters’ distrust of Cameron’s case. What happened to the Cameron who, in 2014, said “Brussels has got too big, too bossy, too interfering.”

Sadly, the euro-con game is nothing new. In July 2007, Jean Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg described the effect on Britain of the new European Union Reform Treaty which would be signed in Lisbon in December that year: “Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?” A few years ago, Bruno Waterfield, The Times’ Brussels correspondent best described the new political dividing line in Europe between “those who accept the political process should be based on mistrust of the people, behind the EU’s closed doors, and those who do not. The EU referendum question has become constitutional in the true sense of the word: it is about the nature of politics, who participates in politics, and for whom political structures are organised”.

Voters understand that basic fissure and can distinguish baloney from what is really at stake. That bureaucrats in Brussels decide issues that ought to be decided by the British people. That Britain has lost control of its borders, of its own migration policy and national security. They understand the EU has failed to deal with its own migration crisis — even after the Paris terrorist attacks the EU weakened passport controls and that Europe’s free-movement Schengen zone is a dream that has become a nightmare, given Greece’s inability to control its own borders.

Our own Gareth Evans has added some bunkum to this debate last week when he said that one of the most bizarre arguments made by those who support Brexit is that Britain should take up a new leadership role as the centre of the “Anglosphere”.

Let’s correct Australia’s former foreign minister who once had high hopes of succeeding then UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros Ghali. Gareth Gareth, you couldn’t be more wrong, wrong. I’ve been in London for two weeks, closely following this debate. Britain leading the Anglosphere hasn’t rated a single mention among the thousands upon thousands of words written or spoken in favour of the Brexit case.

The central reasons for Britain leaving the EU start and end with the most basic human urge for people to govern themselves. It beats handing large swaths of power to unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels sitting in ivory tower supra-national bodies revered by Gareth Gareth. It’s called democracy.

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