A VOTE for Brexit could plunge the UK into recession, David Cameron warned yesterday, as the EU referendum campaign took to life and Tory infighting became increasingly bitter.
Addressing a Remain event in his Oxfordshire constituency, the Prime Minister said the country would take an “immediate and sustained hit” if it voted to leave on June 23.
"I am absolutely convinced that our economic security will be better if we stay in a reformed European Union and it will be seriously at risk if we were to leave," he said.
"If we vote to leave on June 23 we will be voting for higher prices, we will be voting for fewer jobs, we will be voting for lower growth, we will be voting potentially for a recession.
“That is the last thing our economy needs," he said, unveiling a poster claiming an EU exit would cost the equivalent of “£4300 for every household” by depressing GDP.
Vote Leave complained the figure ignored the cost of EU membership fees.
“David Cameron knows that not a single family would lose that amount of money if we vote leave,” said chief executive Matthew Elliott.
“In fact, they would prosper as we spend our money on our priorities.”
Cameron warned an Out vote could also hold back infrastructure projects by cutting the UK off from the European Investment Bank (EIB), which had put up £16bn in the last three years.
Withdrawal from the EIB would have a “devastating impact”, he said, citing improvements to the M8 between Glasgow and Edinburgh, faster East Coast Mainline trains, and the expansion of facilities at Oxford University as recent examples of how it had benefitted the UK.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn combined a defence of the EU with a swipe at the Tories at a rally in London, saying responsibility for many of the UK’s woes lay "in 10 Downing Street, not in Brussels".
On the first full weekend of campaigning since devolved and local elections, the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign claimed to have around 1000 events round the country.
While in the wake of a withering critique by the former Tory Prime Minister Sir John Major on Friday, Vote Leave tried to recover its balance with a speech by Boris Johnson in Bristol.
Major had urged leading Tory Brexit campaigners including Johnson, Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith to apologise for "peddling a clear cut untruth" about the cost of being in the EU, and warned against “morphing” into Ukip by pandering to immigration fears.
He said Brexit campaigners who claimed an expanded EU would see up to 88m people relocate to Britain should be “embarrassed and ashamed” of “such mischief making”.
In response, pro-exit justice minister Dominic Raab called for “substance not name-calling”.
Johnson added: "I am in favour of immigration, I'm a believer in it. What is not right is for huge numbers to come here in a way politicians say is not going to happen. That's where I part company."
Appearing with Tory MP Dr Liam Fox, Johnson used his speech to insist Britain could "prosper, thrive and flourish as never before" if it chose to leave the EU.
“This chance will not come again,” he said. “This is the moment that we all have one equal vote, where everyone in this country can speak truth to power. We are David and Goliath and we know what happened to Goliath."
Fox criticised US President Barack Obama for last month saying Britain would be “at the back of the queue” for a trade deal with America if it left the EU.
The former defence secretary said: “Excuse me, Mr President. But we weren’t at the back of the queue when you needed us in Iraq and Afghanistan. We were right at the front.”
In Chester, former Tory environment secretary Owen Paterson joined Ukip’s migration spokesman Steven Woolfe at a Grassroots Out event.
Paterson said the UK had been reduced to “a colony of an EU superstate, with more integration and increasingly diminished British influence".
There were also some celebrity contributions to the debate. Bjorn Ulvaeus of Abba told BBC Radio 5 that Brexit would “really make me sad”, adding: “It’s like someone you love leaving you. It’s emotional.”
While in Cannes, veteran left-wing film director Ken Loach attacked the "neo-liberal" EU, but "on balance" backed a Remain vote.
"It’s a dangerous, dangerous moment," he warned. “On the one hand the EU is a neo-liberal project, a drive towards privatization, a drive to deregulate the safeguards that are there for workers. On the other hand, if we leave we know individual governments will be moving to the right as far as possible... putting the interests of big business to the fore. I think on balance we fight it better from within, and we make alliances with other European left movements."
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