Pro-EU campaign turns up the heat

HERE’S an interesting fact to ponder. Did you know that, by voting to leave the EU, you will cause the civilised world to go up in flames? It’s true. David Miliband said so. Leaving the EU, he declared in a speech in London yesterday, would be no less than “an act of arson on the international order”. The public should vote to leave only if they “want arson”.

In his view, however, this was “no time” for Britain “to join the ranks of the arsonists”.

A few minutes later he ridiculed the notion that the pro-EU campaign was engaged in scaremongering.

No, I’ve no idea where people get that idea.

Still, give Mr Miliband credit. At least he was getting involved.

Supposedly Jeremy Corbyn wants Britain to stay in the EU.

Far be it from me to suggest that the Labour leader is being less than honest. But put it this way. David Miliband isn’t an MP any more. He doesn’t even live in Britain any more. He works for a charity in New York, 3,000 miles away. And yet – more than seven weeks since the referendum campaign began – he’s still managed to deliver a pro-EU speech sooner than the leader of the Labour Party.

Also, whatever else one might think about Mr Miliband’s warnings of mass conflagration, they did have one thing going for them. They were expressed in intelligible English.

For the former Labour leadership candidate, this represented a bold departure. Because, if anything, he has an even greater weakness for polysyllabic opacity than his younger brother.

This is a man who once informed voters that “we need to use public sector power as a coherent driver of the private sector investment equation”, and challenged them to “imagine that we didn’t just preach subsidiarity in the distribution of power in Europe, but actually practised it at home”.

Yet now, here he was, yelping about arson and apocalypse. Goodness. It was almost exciting. I wouldn’t want to exaggerate, of course. Other parts of his speech showed that Mr Miliband’s talent for long-winded jargonising remains formidable.

Boasting of his power “to see Britain through an international lens”, he explained that the EU “massively multiplies our environmental clout”, and provides “a multiplier effect in Europe’s neighbourhood”. Voters must understand that “you’ve got a profound reality” that Britain is “a thought leader in European development”.

The EU, moreover, helps “crack down on rogue actors”. (I think he meant Vladimir Putin, rather than, say, Jack Nicholson.)

At any rate, his audience seemed to like it. During a brief Q&A session, a middle-aged woman raised her hand. She said she was called Joan, and came from the Gosport Constituency Labour Party.

“I’m very, very pleased to see you back, David,” she beamed. “Absolutely delighted!”

I looked at Mr Miliband’s face. Not a hint of a smile. Not even a nod of acknowledgement.

Well, it’s a serious business, preventing pan-global arson.