DAVID Cameron has ruled out any head-to-head TV debates with the leading lights of the Brexit campaign Boris Johnson or Michael Gove, saying that he did not want the contest to turn into a "Tory psycho-drama".
The Prime Minister used a radio interview with LBC to hit out at the former London mayor, saying his comparison between the EU and Hitler had been “wrong” and claimed the leading Leave campaigner had told friends he had "never been a Leaver" before his decision to back the opposing side to his Conservative colleague.
In a sign of the strain the June 23 contest is placing on his party, the Tory leader admitted that he could “not wait until the referendum is over”, so that the Conservatives could "come back together again".
Mr Cameron said he would take part in three TV referendum events with ITV, BBC and Sky but made clear he would not engage in "blue on blue conflicts" with fellow Tories.
He told interviewer Iain Dale he would be doing “town hall” style programmes rather than head-to-heads.
“These town hall meetings, where you’re standing there on your own in front of a representative audience of the public, answering their very direct questions, that’s better than the slightly phoney atmosphere of debates with the pre-scripted lines and all the rest of it,” the PM explained.
He went on: “I want to demonstrate that those arguing to stay in the European Union, reformed European Union, include the Labour Party, the Green Party, the Liberal Democrat Party, the trade union movement, most of British industry, the majority of small businesses.
"I want to prove the breadth of the campaign and I don't want this to become a sort of Tory psycho-drama between me and Boris or me and Michael Gove."
The party leader acknowledged it would be "inhuman not to be sad and disappointed that Boris and Michael have taken a different view" on Europe and appeared to question Mr Johnson's commitment to the Brexit cause.
"Well, he says he was torn. He's told a lot of people that he'd never been a Leaver. But look, it's for him to say," said Mr Cameron.
Mr Johnson hit back, insisting he had been a Eurosceptic “for decades” and claimed UK Government efforts to produce measures to protect the country's sovereignty had been a "farce".
"The fact is that in a globalised economy the EU is an obsolete political construct whose main policy - the euro - continues to cause unacceptable misery,” added the London MP.
In his LBC interview, Mr Cameron declined to go into what he would do once he closed the No 10 door for the last time but the 49-year-old premier declared: “I've got lots of fuel in the tank."
The first of several EU referendum TV events takes place next Thursday in Glasgow with a programme hosted by the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire and aimed at young voters.
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