No10 panics as Leave surges
Top entrepreneur backs Out with warning over EU red tape Boris attacked after Downing Street is warned of likely Brexit Vote Leave: PM using Queen’s birthday honours to curry favour
DOWNING Street is “panicked” over the EU referendum amid growing internal signs that support for the Leave campaign is surging.
Private data and internal polling which shows that after two weeks of building momentum there have been huge swings to the Brexit campaign has prompted growing alarm in the Remain camp, sources have said.
It has led to a marked change in strategy, with the campaign to keep Britain in the EU orchestrating a series of highly personal attacks on Boris Johnson, a leader of the Leave campaign.
David Cameron’s team has adopted a “take out Boris strategy” by allowing a Tory Cabinet minister to claim Mr Johnson only backed Brexit in order to further his ambition to be prime minister and associating him with Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader.
In a sign the markets believe a Brexit is more likely, the FTSE 100 yesterday suffered its biggest one-day fall since the beginning of the campaign, decreasing by 1.86 per cent. The pound also dropped sharply as a poll gave Leave a 10-point lead, with 55 per cent of voters now backing a Brexit.
With less than a fortnight to go until polling day, the campaign yesterday became increasingly fevered. In other developments:
The Queen was dragged into the row as the Prime Minister was accused of using the birthday honours list to reward nearly two dozen backers of the Remain campaign. Sir James Dyson discloses in a
interview that he is joining the Brexit campaign, describing Remain’s warnings about trade as “cobblers”.
Labour’s EU campaign was in chaos as senior figures admitted many of their supporters are now backing Brexit after Jeremy Corbyn’s failure to make the case vociferously for Remain.
Justice Secretary Michael Gove’s Leave campaign warned that Britain will need seven new prisons by 2030 if immigration is not controlled.
Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, has ruled out Britain joining the single market after a Brexit, declaring that “out is out” for the UK.
British victims of Libyan-sponsored IRA terrorism are being blocked from receiving millions of pounds in compensation because of human rights laws, the Government has admitted.
This weekend there will be an outpouring of patriotic sentiment as the nation celebrates the Queen’s 90th and the Duke of Edinburgh’s 95th birthdays and the beginning of the home nations’ campaign in the European football championships, which insiders believe will help the Leave campaign.
Government insiders have said the Remain campaign is “falling apart” after a series of salvos by Mr Johnson and Mr Gove. Mr Cameron is appearing on the BBC tomorrow in what is being seen as an attempt to relaunch the campaign. Despite the Prime Minister claiming he did not want the referendum campaign to descend into a series of “blue-on-blue” attacks between Conservatives, the Remain campaign is now seeking to undermine Eurosceptic Tories, it is understood.
During a televised debate on Thursday Amber Rudd, the Energy Secretary, made personal attacks on Mr Johnson, accusing him of joining the Brexit campaign to further his own career. She said of Mr Johnson: “He’s the life and soul of the party but he’s not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening.” The Remain campaign released a poster featuring a mock-up of Mr Johnson, Mr Gove and Mr Farage, at a casino table with the slogan: “Don’t let them gamble with your future.” Sources in the Leave camp said their rivals were resorting to “playground jibes” in a sign “they are rattled, have no discipline, no ideas and no hope”.
During a town hall event for Facebook, Mr Cameron was asked if he feels “sorry” for the attacks on Mr Johnson. He said the debates were “lively affairs and that’s the way it is”. However, Mr Cameron did suggest that he still intends to offer Mr Johnson a Cabinet position after the referendum.
The Leave campaign said 21 prominent Remain supporters were named in the birthday honours list, including Richard Reed, deputy chairman of Britain Stronger in Europe, who received a CBE. Others include John Armitage, of the hedge fund Egerton Capital, who gave £15,000 to the Remain campaign and is made a CBE. Awards also went to Remain donors and people who put their names to joint letters warning of the dangers of EU withdrawal.
Labour MP Gisela Stuart, the Vote Leave chairman, denounced the awards as a “shabby stitch-up” and accused Mr Cameron of stooping to “a new low” in his drive to secure a Remain vote.
Government sources rejected the charge, saying that the honours were decided by independent committees and included at least three prominent supporters of the Leave campaign. In a special supplement in today’s
Daily Telegraph, Mr Johnson and Mr Cameron set out the arguments for and against the EU. Mr Cameron says: “For me, remaining in the EU is the big, bold, British decision.” Mr Johnson writes: “This is the time to restore health to our democracy, to go global, and to believe in Britain. It’s win-win.”
HILDA PRICE cared little about the 2,000 people in front of her and the millions watching on television as she led prayers at St Paul’s Cathedral on one of the biggest days of her life.
Sitting directly in front of her was a woman born on the same day as she was in 1926. “I could see my Queen there,” she said later, “and it was gorgeous. That’s why I’m here.”
Yesterday’s Service of Thanksgiving for the Queen’s 90 years was laden with ceremony, yet no amount of formality could constrain the overwhelming affection shown to Her Majesty on the first of three days of official birthday celebrations.
Her arrival at St Paul’s was supposed to be announced by a trumpet fanfare, but instead it was the cheers of the crowds outside that first told the congregation of her presence.
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh had, unusually, arrived 11 minutes late because of a traffic accident blocking their original route, and there was a sense of relief, as well as excitement, among those waiting in the street when their car finally pulled up.
The Duke, celebrating his 95th birthday, was treated to a rendition of Happy
Birthday as he and the Queen made their way up the cathedral steps, ignoring the handrail that had been installed as a concession to their advancing years.
Wearing a primrose yellow coat and matching hat and dress by Angela Kelly, her dressmaker, the Queen, after a brief discussion with her husband, turned and waved to those standing 10-deep behind barriers, raising the volume even higher. Waiting for them inside were no fewer than 53 members of the Royal family, including, for the first time at a St Paul’s service, all eight of their grandchildren, as eight-year-old Viscount Severn, son of the Earl and Countess of Wessex, made his debut. But the majority of the congregation were public servants: NHS workers, policemen, firemen, people who share the sense of duty that has driven the Queen for the 64 years of her reign. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Justin Welby, spoke of “deep wonder and profound gratitude” for the Queen’s life and reign in his sermon, rejoicing “for the way in which the life God has given you in turn you have given wonderfully in service to this nation”. To his right, David Cameron, Tony Blair and Sir John Major looked on (Gordon Brown was absent because of an unfortunate mix-up over his invitation) together with most of the Cabinet. Across the aisle from them was Jeremy Corbyn – apparently snubbed by Mr Blair who walked past him before the service as the former premier reached out to shake hands with Sadiq Khan, the new Mayor of London. But the stars of the show were all nonagenarians. Sir David Attenborough, who was 90 in May, entertained the congregation by reading a memoir by Michael Bond, the Paddington Bear author, who was 90 in January. The Queen smiled at the description of a father who always wore a hat, even when paddling in the sea, in case he met someone he knew, and of endless “aunties” – the family friends left widowed by the Second World War. The memoir was one of three birthday gifts in the service. The others were an anthem written by Judith Weir, Master of the Queen’s Music, and a performance by Martin James Bartlett, the BBC Young Musician of 2014, of Burlesque by Arnold Bax, the Queen’s first Master of Music.
Her Majesty was, perhaps, most touched by the effort made by Mrs Price, chosen because of the coincidence of their birthdays, though rather more frail than her Queen.
She had to be helped up two steps to a lectern by a cadet and a verger (or virger as St Paul’s prefers to spell it) and feared that her voice would fail her at the crucial moment.
“I nearly lost my voice last night,” she said afterwards. “I had been talking a lot. But it was all right today.”
Mrs Price, from Cardiff, is a leading light in the Mother’s Union and has two children, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. She put her steady voice down to the fact that “I was a clergyman’s wife”.
She was one of six prayer readers, the rest of whom represented aspects of the Queen’s life, including the broadcaster Clare Balding, from the world of racing, and Baroness Scotland, representing the Commonwealth, of which she is Secretary-General.
Lady Susan Hussey, one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, described the service as “beautiful, exactly what the Queen would have wanted”.
After the service the Queen and the Duke carried on with their duties, hosting a lunch at Buckingham Palace for governors-general of the Commonwealth. Meanwhile, the Duke
and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince Harry and other members of the Royal family attended a reception at London’s Guildhall for 1,800 guests who had attended the service.
In the Great Hall, where the monarch once delivered her 1992 “annus horribilis” speech, Jeffrey Mountevans, the Lord Mayor of London, said the carriages of the new Elizabeth Line on the London Underground could be filled “many millions of times over, with lives the Queen has touched... [people] who cherish our Queen, who look to her for strength, serenity and faith for the future”.
The Queen was later given a £560 Dartington Crystal “Clematis” vase by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, each of whom had contributed £35 towards the gift. Prince Harry, however, told guests at the Guildhall that the best birthday present the Queen could get would be “a day off so she could lie about and do nothing”.
Even if that were an option, the Queen, who has two more days of official birthday celebrations to come, just does not seem the type.