IT was all meant to be so civilised; a gentle disagreement between Conservative friends, who would shake hands after the people’s verdict and carry on in a One Nation fashion as if nothing had happened.
But such has been the poisonous exchanges between erstwhile friends, the In-Out contest has been turned into a Shakespearian blood feud. How could it be otherwise when David Cameron’s erstwhile closest chums, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, are now campaigning to end his political career?
Not since the dog days of John Major’s doomed administration has there been such a blue on blue pyscho-drama with the Prime Minister being publicly criticised by his own Tory ministers. In such circumstances, it is hard to see how the Conservative government can easily reform after June 23; revenge looks more likely than reunification whatever the result next Thursday.
One interesting aspect to the EU referendum campaign is how it has emulated in so many ways that of the Scottish independence campaign of two years ago.
It was interesting to see how Mr Gove took the SNP mantra, used in the Yes camp’s furtherance of the independence cause, and translated it into the Brexiters’ cause, complaining that the Remain camp were saying Britain was “too wee and too weak” to go it alone.
The torrent of Treasury statistics ahead of the purdah period of government non-activity reflected a similar exercise in 2014 when Project Fear was born amid a plethora of Whitehall documents.
Last week, Gordon Brown, the man whose tub-thumping oratory in the last few days of the Scottish campaign was deemed by some as having saved the Union, was back on the stump in Leicester doing exactly the same but this time to keep Britain in another Union. Indeed, just like 2014 the former Labour premier had taken the lead as the Prime Minister took a back seat; Mr Cameron had originally been scheduled to do the Midlands speech, which Mr Brown eventually gave.
In this campaign, we are told it is now a “once in a generation” decision and that if we vote to leave, there is “no way back”. Sound familiar? The polls are now trending against Remain and for Brexit.
Of course, in the last rush towards polling day in September 2014 panic set in and the leaders of the three main parties rushed up to Scotland to unveil the Vow; the game-changer moment, as some saw it, that ultimately seized victory from the jaws of defeat for the No camp.
No 10 was, interestingly, rather coy about the PM unveiling a Vow-like initiative in the next few days, suggesting enticingly that people would have to wait for some new developments.
A trip to Brussels perhaps, where Mr Cameron will be flanked by Europe’s five presidents and national leaders to unveil an EU Vow, say, on tweaking the free movement of people principle to allow restrictions in extreme circumstances?
It would smack of desperation, of course, and attract the disdain of the Leave camp as the Vow did the pro-independence camp but in the end it swayed the don’t-knows to listen to their conservative consciences.
With time running out, it might just work again.
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