BORIS Johnson has accused the Remain camp of engaging in the “most extraordinary avalanche of scaremongering, a sort of Himalayan snow job of statistics” about how things would go wrong if Britain backed Brexit.

And on the same BBC Two programme shown on Tuesday night about the In-Out debate, his Conservative colleague George Osborne insisted there were no risks to Britain staying in the European Union, insisting the UK had the “best of both worlds”; being in the single market but not in the Eurozone or the Schengen single border area.

In “Britain and Europe: For Richer or Poorer?” fronted by the BBC’s Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg, Mr Johnson was challenged over Vote Leave’s central claim that the debate is between the political Establishment backing Remain and ordinary folk backing Brexit.

When she pointed out to the Old Etonian former London mayor that he was part of the elite, the Tory MP replied: “It is in a sense a struggle between people who want to take back control and a small group of people who do very well out of the current system and who are able, and you know Christine Lagarde[the IMF chief] can go ‘mwah mwah’…at Davos or whatever it happens to be; of course, they’re going to be in favour of the system.

“But there are plenty of people who want to see proper democratic control, who want the democracy of their country restored and feel it’s, it’s weird that it is simply being given away for no particular gain.”

When Mr Johnson’s reference of members of the Establishment kissing Ms Lagarde on both cheeks – a thinly-veiled reference to the Chancellor – was put to Mr Osborne, he replied: “The people who are the Leave campaigners are not going to be the people who pay the economic price if we leave; it will be the ordinary working people of this country who see their jobs threatened, who see the value of their family home go down, who see their wages hit, who don’t have the certainty of living in a country that’s trading with the world.

“You know, they are the people who are going to pay the price, the working people of Britain, if we vote to leave and the economy suffers.”

The Chancellor denied it was irresponsible even to hold the referendum if the consequences of Brexit would be so catastrophic to Britain as he argued.

“It’s not irresponsible to trust the people with the future of this country and the British people will take a mature and sensible judgement; that we are better off remaining in this reformed European Union, that we don’t want to take a leap in the dark, that we don’t want all the uncertainty and the risk and the economic costs that would come from leaving the EU.”

But Mr Johnson expressed exasperation at the scale of what he saw as the Remain camp’s fearmongering.

“Donnez-moi un break, as we say in Brussels,” declared the former London mayor.

“Here we are now with the most extraordinary avalanche of scaremongering, a sort of Himalayan snow job of statistics about how things are going to go wrong. We’ve got to be very clear what’s going on here Laura. They are obviously determined to try to win this referendum by one means or another and that the means they have chosen - because the focus groups and the polling seem to indicate that that’s the most productive line of attack - is to escalate the risks.”

The Tory backbencher, whom some Eurosceptics believe could be prime minister if the vote is to leave the EU, insisted the Brussels bloc was moving in fundamentally the wrong direction.

“The Euro is in dire trouble; they’re trying to prop it up. What’s happening in Greece is by no means solved. The Italian banks are basically bust. They’re going to have to go forward with measures to lock Europe together ever tighter. It’s been clear that we can’t get out from under the consequences of that. They are going to want to create a fiscal union in which the single market institutions would be used; Britain could not escape and could not escape paying for it,” declared Mr Johnson.

The Chancellor hit back, saying it was a “complete illusion” to think Britain would somehow protect itself by cutting itself off from the continent of Europe.

“A huge amount of our jobs, prosperity depends on that. I’d rather do what Britain’s always done, which is get stuck in, fight our corner, win our arguments, win our battles. We should have self-confidence in our country’s ability to shape the world and shape our continent rather than pulling up the drawbridge.

“That’s always been a disaster for Britain when we’ve done that in the past and we shouldn’t do it in the future,” added Mr Osborne.

Meantime, Mr Johnson was asked how he would celebrate a Brexit vote on June 23. He replied: “With some, some produce from our friends and partners over the Channel.”

Asked if it would be French champagne, he added: “Probably; which will be just as cheap as it is now.”