Michael gove

This week the Prime Minister devoted a speech to what he regarded as six lies being told by his opponents in the EU referendum campaign. He later confessed that the idea for the speech had come to him while watching the news at 9 p.m. the previous evening. It would have been better if he had contented himself with shouting at the television, rather than adding yet more rancour to what has become a slanging match. Most voters tune into an election campaign only in its final few weeks; those who do so now will find nothing but hysteria, hyperventilation and obloquy. Where, it is often asked, are the facts? If we can distil the arguments down to the most salient points, what are they?

Momentum in the 'Leave' campaign seems to be growing after Brexit took the lead in two polls out today. There are, however, still several weeks until the actual day of the EU referendum and the gap between the two sides remains marginal (four per cent). But 'Remain' still seem shaken by these polls. Here's how they spent the day fighting back: David Cameron said Brexit would put a bomb under Britain's economy, going on to say that 'the worst thing is, we would have lit the fuse ourselves': The PM was backed up Lib Dem leader Tim Farron. In a joint event, Farron said the argument for 'Leave' was built on 'utter, invented rubbish': But in the tit-for-tat battle which is the EU referendum, the 'Leave' campaign also went on the offensive today.

The Leave campaign have had their best week of the campaign this week. After months of being battered by the Whitehall machine, they’ve taken advantage of purdah silencing government departments to get themselves onto the front foot. As I write in The Sun this morning, even IN supporting Cabinet Ministers admit that Leave have had a good week. But they argue that they won’t be able to ride the immigration issue to victory on June 23rd. One argues that you can’t focus on immigration week after week, or ‘By week four, you end up sounding like Nigel Farage’. But Vote Leave think their trump card is the link between immigration and people’s pay packets. That is the economic argument they are confident they will win.

Westminster has a tendency to get ahead of itself. MPs want to discuss the aftermath of an event long before it has happened. They play never-ending games of ‘What if?’ At the moment, the political class cannot stop discussing, in great detail, what the post-EU referendum political landscape will look like. The speculation is, in and of itself, part of the political process. Much of the talk of the post-vote challenges facing David Cameron is intended to persuade him to pull his punches in the final weeks of the campaign. What no one disputes is that the Prime Minister will find governing even harder after 23 June. His majority is already thin and he has had to U-turn on a host of policies since the election.

In a speech to Policy Exchange today, Steve Hilton—David Cameron’s former senior adviser—will make the case that ‘any intellectual rigorous examination makes it impossible for a Tory moderniser to support staying in the EU’. He argues that Tory modernisation was about trusting people, and that the EU does not; that modernisation was about localism, and that the EU is inherently centralising; and that the EU helps the rich and not the rest. I think there’s much to be said for Hilton’s analysis. (Though, of course, it should be recognised that there are Tory modernisers on both sides of the argument.) But where Hilton is surely right is that the EU is not the future, it is an idea of its time—the late 20th century.

I don’t know if 'Leave' supporters will win. With the young abstaining and the old voting in a low-turnout referendum, it is just about possible that they could. But it is already dismally clear how they will react if they lose: they won’t accept the result. Nigel Farage was proud to admit that he would be a bad loser. 'In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way,' he told the Mirror. 'If the Remain campaign win two-thirds to one-third that ends it.' The old-fashioned among you might have thought that in any electoral contest the side with the most votes wins. How out of touch you fuddy-duddies are.  It is not enough to win a majority of the vote anymore.

One of the big questions about the EU referendum campaign is whether the Tory leadership is running its campaign in such a way as to make it impossible to stitch the party back together again after the result on 23 June. The Prime Minister’s colleagues concerned with party management who work in Number 10 and the whips’ office are certainly very agitated about the mood in the party, with a number of pro-Brexit ministers appearing to conclude that they have burned their bridges irreparably. This has led their colleagues to worry that there will be a large group of ministers and backbenchers after a ‘Remain’ vote who still try to move against the Prime Minister.

Is the Brexit campaign 'morphing into Ukip'? That's what Sir John Major will say he fears is happening later. In a speech at Oxford University, he'll argue that those calling for Britain to leave the EU are 'fuelling prejudice on immigration'. He'll also say that: 'As the leave arguments implode one by one, some of the Brexit leaders morph into Ukip and turn to their default position - immigration. I urge them to take care, this is dangerous territory that - if handled carelessly can open up long-term divisions in our society'. So does he have a point? It's definitely credible to see how some elements of the leave camp are focusing their positions around the immigration debate.

[audioplayer src="http://feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/262486539-the-spectator-podcast-erdogans-europe.mp3" title="James Forsyth, Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman discuss Boris" startat=552] Listen [/audioplayer] After an eight-year detour into municipal government, Boris Johnson has now returned to national politics. The former mayor of London will mark this moment by going on the stump for the Leave campaign. He has some catching up to do: while never far from the public eye, he was absent from the Commons for seven years. Even when back in Parliament after the general election, Boris felt he could not take the cabinet job that was offered to him. But his time at City Hall hasn’t dented his ambitions; quite the opposite.

There are moments when one wonders whether one is seeing and hearing the same things as others. For me such a moment occurred a fortnight ago when reading The Spectator’s weekly column by our political editor, James Forsyth. James is exceptionally well plugged in to the world of Westminster, but — beyond that — a person of cool and sensitive judgment, so I read what he writes with attention. He said this: ‘[The Prime Minister] is campaigning with no thought for the feelings of those in the party who disagree with him. It is one thing for a leader to disagree with close to half of his MPs and most of his activists, but quite another not to do it respectfully.’ And for the first time in my life I had literally no idea what James was on about.

Michael Gove has been making his case for Brexit and doing his best to knock the stuffing out of the 'remain' campaign. He started the day on the Today programme, spelling out why he thought Britain was best off outside the EU. In his pitch to the nation, he said: 'I want us to vote to leave the European Union before it's too late, because that's the safer choice for Britain. If we vote to stay, we're not settling for a secure status quo, we're voting to be hostages, locked in the back of the car, driven headlong towards deeper EU integration.' The Justice Secretary then gave a speech later in the day in which he put forward in greater detail why he thought the opposite side in the EU debate are treating the electorate like children.