Where were you before, Baroness Warsi?

Voters weighing up the EU’s pros and cons deserve more than this sudden and self-serving volte face

Before yesterday Baroness Sayeeda Warsi had not said a huge amount on the EU in her career, as far as anyone was aware. She did once take part in a debate alongside Dan Hannan, the Brexiteer MEP, in Manchester. She also praised the benefits of EU membership in Parliament a few times. But no one really knew what she thought about the referendum. Her website makes no mention of it. Mr Hannan once invited her to join the Brexit campaign, he said, but she declined.

Yet she started this week, apparently, with a headline-grabbing “conversion” from Out to In. Why this sudden outburst of Euro-passion? She blames Outers’ “toxic, divisive and xenophobic political campaigning” for her decision. She just couldn’t bear to share a platform with a load of people spreading “lies” and “hate”.

Crikey – here was I thinking that we were about to make a huge existential decision about our system of government. I was under the misguided impression that when I vote on Thursday, I’ll be taking part in a momentous choice, weighing up the innumerably complex geopolitical and economic ramifications of Britain’s place in the EU. I thought that I’d be making a nuanced judgment on the pros and cons of national democratic sovereignty versus the unpalatable, but perhaps useful, trade-offs of staying in the single market.

As I’ve written, I’ll be very reluctantly voting Remain. I thought it was for complicated geopolitical reasons. But thanks to Baroness Warsi, I understand that I should actually be voting based on whether I like those ugly luminous green and purple ties some of those ghastly Brexiteers insist on wearing. And for the record, no, I don’t like them one bit.

On Thursday, just before campaigning was suspended for the nation to grieve the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox, Nigel Farage unveiled a poster. It depicted a long line of tired refugees walking along a road somewhere in Eastern Europe and the words “Breaking point – the EU has failed us all.”

Now, I did not like that poster at all. I liked it even less than I like the green and purple ties. I accept that many people are worried about immigration. But being descended from Jews who, at various times and in various places, have had to flee persecution, I can’t support using an image of desperate people fleeing war to make such a vague, crass point. (In what way has the EU failed us? What’s that got to do with the image? Are those “dreadful foreigners” on their way here?) Frankly, it was awful.

There was someone else far more notable than me who didn’t like the poster: Michael Gove, one of Britain’s chief Outers. Mr Gove “shuddered” when he saw it, he said at the weekend. He didn’t like it and wouldn’t have published it. He doesn’t want to defend Mr Farage’s talking points any more than Baroness Warsi does. Which is why, when Mr Gove went on Sky to argue the case for Brexit, he barely mentioned immigration and talked instead about democracy.

That is why we saw such vicious infighting among the Brexiteers over who would lead their campaign. That is why Boris Johnson makes such contorted (and rather unbelievable) arguments about how a post-Brexit immigration system would allow in more non-whites.

Baroness Warsi claims that the moment of her conversion to Remain came when she saw that poster. Yet if she had really been a committed Brexiteer before, as she says, she would have been out there making the non-xenophobic, non-divisive case for leaving the EU. As she told the BBC: “The loud voices [for Leave] should be from moderates who believe that Britain has a place in the world.” I couldn’t agree more. So why, Baroness, were you not out there making that case?

In this awful, brutal campaign, there has been more than one last-minute conversion. Sarah Wollaston, the Tory MP, switched from Leave to Remain. And Charles Guthrie, former Chief of Defence Staff, went the other way. I don’t blame them. This is a difficult, fraught decision with no perfect options on the ballot paper. But whatever decision we make, it ought to be based on a genuine judgment about the pros and cons of the case – not on one person’s momentary desire for the limelight.