Migration fears boost the Leave campaign
Remain camp’s lead shrank from 13 points to five in a week, latest polling finds
PUBLIC concern over immigration has delivered a “significant” boost to the Leave campaign in the past week, amid growing concern about Britain’s ability to control its borders, a new poll for
The Daily Telegraph suggests. Support for the Leave campaign has risen by four points to 46 per cent among definite voters, with Remain on 51 per cent. The five-point gap has been cut from 13 points after a week in which immigration, rather than economics, dominated the EU referendum debate.
The poll, by ORB, was carried out as new figures revealed that migration had risen to record levels and forecasts showed that immigration would add four million people to the population of Britain over the next decade. It also coincided with a series of attacks by Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Priti Patel on David Cameron over his failure to cut migration to the tens of thousands.
Meanwhile, images of migrants drowning in the Mediterranean as they attempted to reach Europe prompted widespread debate over the EU’s response to the crisis.
Sir Lynton Crosby, the strategist who masterminded David Cameron’s election victory, suggested that the focus on migration over the past seven days had boosted the Leave campaign.
Writing in today’s Daily Telegraph he says “increasing focus on lack of control over immigration and associated message discipline” had helped the Leave camp with little more than three weeks of campaigning to go.
The poll results were made public as Mr Cameron, who was campaigning yesterday with Labour London Mayor Sadiq Khan, told an audience that the UK was now “on track to be the best multi-faith, multi-ethnic opportunity democracy anywhere on Earth”.
Elsewhere in the EU referendum campaign:
Ministers were accused of ignoring four warning that Britain’s small ports are an easy target for smugglers, as Theresa May, the Home Secretary, ordered a new fleet of patrol boats to help target people traffickers in the English Channel.
The Electoral Commission contacted all counting officers in the UK telling them not to send out controversial “biased” guides to postal voters which appear to suggest they should support the Remain side in next month’s referendum after it ordered a council to reprint its remaining 5,000 leaflets
Ken Clarke, the pro-EU former justice secretary, claimed that the Out campaign was using the referendum to push a “leadership bid” for Boris Johnson, the former London mayor
The Leave campaign launched an attack on Sajid Javid, the Business Secretary, suggesting that his priority was “his political career” as he campaigned for Britain to remain in the EU.
The latest ORB/Telegraph poll found a boost for the Leave campaign as voters reacted to claims that the Government was powerless to prevent more migration from the Continent if Britons vote to remain in the EU on June 23. The poll, which surveyed 800 voters
last week, found that 52 per cent believe that quitting the EU would improve Britain’s immigration system, up two per cent on last week. Just 23 per cent – down six points – thought remaining in the EU would do the same.
Forty eight per cent agreed that quitting the EU would “give us greater control of our lives”, up four per cent, while those who thought remaining would be better fell 7 points to 30 per cent. The poll also showed that the difference between the two sides among all voters – irrespective of whether they will vote – had more than halved, with 51 per cent backing remain, against 42 per cent for Leave.
Meanwhile, the former cricketing star Sir Ian Botham backed the Brexit campaign with a warning that Britain could get “cluttered” if it voted to remain. Sir Ian said: “The people coming into our country, they don’t seem to have to come over with a job, any qualifications, just turn up. I think it will get cluttered.”
Retired naval officer Rear Admiral Chris Parry said the Government should deploy a warship to the Channel rather than lending it to Mediterranean operations.