Rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen, including David Cameron and Boris Johnson’s EU referendum speeches
Boris Johnson’s EU speech - Summary and analysis
Afternoon summary
5.40pm BST
Isolationism has never served this country well. Whenever we turn our back on Europe, sooner or later we come to regret it ...
The serried rows of white headstones in lovingly-tended Commonwealth war cemeteries stand as silent testament to the price that this country has paid to help restore peace and order in Europe.
We also need to reflect on the impact of what we do and say here on the public outside, across the country. I don’t expect, or even want, blind loyalty, but members and supporters expect us all to focus on taking on the Tories – and for our debates to be focused on policy, not personality.
Members also tell me that they don’t think Labour MPs should be parading on the media to give a running commentary on our party. If we are on the media we are there to give our verdict on this failed and divisive government, not on each other.
Jon Trickett set us the target of closing the gap with the Tories at the 2015 general election. Last year we were nearly seven points behind. The projection from Thursday’s results by the BBC and Professor John Curtice shows that nationally we are now a point ahead of the Tories in our national share of the vote.
Last week we won all four mayoral elections, including the two gains in London and Bristol, we made a net gain in the number of Labour councils across England, we held councils across the south, we scored the second best result in Wales since devolution, and we made a net gain of three police and crime commissioners.
This is the first time that certainly I’ve ever felt the need to issue such a thing [parliamentary order] in order to secure a witness. I think frankly the difficulty of getting you here is scarcely consistent with the application that you have put to be the lead campaigner for leaving the EU. Do you have any appreciation of what it looks like to a group of MPs that you are telling them you would rather go to Switzerland than turn up?
5.09pm BST
Here is Sir John Chilcot’s letter to David Cameron about setting the date for publication of his report.
4.53pm BST
The Iraq inquiry has announced that its report will be published on Wednesday 6 July. Here is the press statement it has put out.
Sir John Chilcot and the prime minister have agreed that the Iraq inquiry’s report will be published on Wednesday 6 July 2016, it was announced today.
The date was confirmed in correspondence between Sir John and the prime minister and follows completion of both the report and the national security checking process. This checking process is a standard procedure for inquiries and ensures that government ministers meet their obligations to safeguard national security and under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) when publishing the inquiry’s report. Now this checking process is complete, the Inquiry can prepare its 2.6m word report for publication.
4.40pm BST
I’m having a fantastic 1st day on the job as your new Mayor. I felt very welcomed by all who greeted me this morning pic.twitter.com/dMxYG4cLI4
Sadiq Khan has been tweeting about his new job as mayor of London.
I later met staff and Commissioners at City Hall. Together we’ll do a great job. I'll be a Mayor for all Londoners pic.twitter.com/7KMB8ir4Du
4.30pm BST
My colleague Ewen MacAskill has written an analysis of David Cameron’s speech, and his suggestion that leaving the EU would put peace at risk. Ewen is a bit sceptical. Here is an excerpt.
Decades of trade and political cooperation on the continent through the EU and its predecessors have undoubtedly helped to make war between the major European powers less likely – unthinkable, even. But the the key word is “helped”.
Related: Is David Cameron right that leaving EU could increase the risk of war?
4.18pm BST
And this is from Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian prime minister who is now head of the ALDE liberal group in the European parliament.
Desperate & dangerous from @BorisJohnson.The Kremlin will be pleased.Nothing justifies Putin''s invasion of Ukraine https://t.co/BPa6G8Q9Kk
4.13pm BST
Downing Street has also taken a swipe at Boris Johnson over his Russia/Ukraine remarks.
This is from the Daily Mail’s Jason Groves.
No 10 slaps down Boris over Russia: 'PM is clear that illegal annexation of Crimea was brought about by Russia alone...'
4.06pm BST
In his speech Boris Johnson posed five questions for the Remain camp. (See 11.55am.)
My colleague Rowena Mason has been looking at the possible answers.
Related: Boris Johnson's five EU questions: where does remain camp stand?
4.00pm BST
Support for Britain staying in the EU among business leaders appears to be hardening according to a new survey. A poll by the Institute of Directors of 1,224 of its members found 63% backed Remain, up from 60% in February, while 29% supported Leave, down from 31% in the previous survey.
3.54pm BST
Here are three blogs summarising the latest polling on the EU referendum.
The What UK Thinks poll of polls
3.36pm BST
Chuka Umunna, the Labour MP and former shadow business secretary, is also having a go at Boris Johnson over his Russia/Ukraine comments. He said:
The EU referendum campaign has brought out the worst in the former mayor of London, Boris Johnson. First there was his nonsense about President Obama’s Kenyan ancestry. Now he’s become an apologist for President Putin. And this is the man who wants to become our next prime minister.
3.30pm BST
Crispin Blunt, the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons foreign affairs committee, has announced today that he will be voting to leave the EU. He said:
It is in our interest for the EU to have a much stronger defence capability, the issue is whether it is in our interest to be part of it. If Britons felt sufficient commitment to the European ideal it would be right to join it and encourage it. But the difficult truth is our geography, history, culture and economic interest produce a much more qualified commitment to that ideal than that of our continental partners.
I want my country to have a positive role in the world, not a negative one. The only positive role on offer is a global internationalist one. Let’s take it, embrace our unique global advantages and assist our European neighbours with resolving the politics and democratic accountability of ever closer union, rather than obstructing them.
3.13pm BST
In his speech Boris Johnson suggested that the EU was partly responsible for the rise of the far-right in Europe. He said:
In Austria the far-right have just won an election for the first time since the 1930s. The French National Front are on the march in France, and Marine le Pen may do well in the Presidential elections. You could not say that EU integration is promoting either mutual understanding or moderation, and the economic consequence range from nugatory to disastrous.
The claim by Boris Johnson today that the EU is fuelling the far right is especially bizarre since he has caved into the call of the far right to break up the EU. There is nothing hopeful about making common cause with Mrs Le Pen.
3.07pm BST
Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister and a former EU and UN special envoy to the Balkans, has posted another tweet about Boris Johnson. He is also accusing Johnson of being a Putin apologist.
I'm sorry to say, but @BorisJohnson is totally ignorant of the facts on Ukraine, EU and Russia. Apologist for Putin. https://t.co/awLF4wqAdN
3.00pm BST
In a press notice put out by Britain Stronger in Europe, Jack Straw, the Labour former home secretary and foreign secretary, has described Boris Johnson as a “Putin apologist” on the basis of what he said about Russia and Ukraine. (See 1.44pm.) Straw said:
Boris Johnson has plumbed new depths today by joining the likes of Farage, Le Pen and Wilders in blaming the EU, rather than Vladimir Putin, for what has happened in Ukraine.
If further evidence were needed about the careless disregard for our security demonstrated by Leave campaigners, by being a Putin apologist, Johnson has provided it.
2.45pm BST
Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister and a former EU and UN special envoy to the Balkans, has said that Boris Johnson’s comments about Russia and Ukraine (see 1.44pm) are “complete nonsense”.
@markhleonard @Yatsenyuk_AP @sikorskiradek @BorisJohnson Did he really say that? Complete rubbish. And justifying Putin’s aggression.
2.41pm BST
Radoslaw Sikorski, the former Polish foreign minister, has used Twitter to express concern about Boris Johnson’s comments about Ukraine. (See 1.44pm.)
So, if USA concludes TTIP with EU, but not Russia, will Russia be 'provoked' to invade us? @markhleonard @InFactsOrg https://t.co/JM0LW3tNXi
@carlbildt @markhleonard @Yatsenyuk_AP @BorisJohnson Disturbing that Brexiters - told what's what by @POTUS - now trim towards @PutinRF_Eng
@BorisJohnson Boris, old boy, time to make a decision. Are you, on EU, with @POTUS, or with Pres. Putin? 1000k Poles in UK need to know.
2.33pm BST
The journalist Edward Lucas thinks Boris Johnson has also changed his stance on Russia and Ukraine.
yet only 2 years ago Boris said of Ukraine "this is Putin's war & his responsibility" https://t.co/21RAPcy8TO
2.27pm BST
The Telegraph’s Michael Deacon points out that what Boris Johnson was saying in his speech and Q&A this morning about the argument that the EU has helped to maintain peace in Europe is somewhat at odds with what he says in his 2014 Churchill biography.
Has the EU brought peace to Europe? Left: Boris Johnson today. Right: Boris Johnson in 2014 pic.twitter.com/szayjcol55
2.24pm BST
Turning away from the EU for a moment, you may remember that there was a problem with voting in Barnet, in London, on Thursday. Hundreds of people were turning away from polling stations in the morning because the wrong paperwork had been distributed.
As the Press Association reports, this has cost Barnet’s chief executive his job.
Barnet Council chief executive Andrew Travers is leaving by “mutual agreement” after a blunder left many people in the area unable to vote.
An investigation was launched after it emerged that thousands of names were missing from electoral lists at all of the north London authority’s 155 polling stations.
1.44pm BST
This was easily Boris Johnson’s best speech in the EU campaign. You could tell he was being serious because Vote Leave sent out a text in advance, and Johnson actually stuck to it. The speech was titled “The liberal cosmopolitan case to Vote Leave” and at its heart was a bold claim about Brexit being “the great project of European liberalism” - based on Johnson’s argument that the EU has lost democratic legitimacy. He was particularly interesting on the origins of the EU and on the attempt to create a European consciousness. But the speech also included a long (and impressively dull) passage intended to counter the argument that single market membership has enhanced trade.
But some of the most interesting material came in the Q&A session afterwards. David Cameron takes questions after his speeches, but normally only about three. To his credit, Johnson took a wider range of questions, and seemed genuinely willing to engage with reporters.
I don’t think the prime minister can seriously believe that leaving the EU would trigger war on the European continent given that he was prepared only a few months ago to urge that people should vote leave if they failed to get a substantially reformed European Union. We have not got a substantially reformed European Union ...
I think it is very, very curious that the prime minister is now calling this referendum and warning us that world war three is about to break out unless we vote to remain. I think that is not the most powerful argument I’ve heard.
The biggest single threat that I can see is that people on the Remain camp will continue to run scare stories about world war three, or bubonic plague, or whatever it happens to be, and they may in the end inadvertently do material damage to people’s confidence about this country.
I think that people should think very hard before they make these kind of warnings. I don’t believe that leaving the EU would cause world war three to break out on the European continent.
I saw the disaster when the EU was charged with sorting out former Yugoslavia, and I saw how Nato sorted it out.
The European Union, as you will remember, exacerbated the problems by the premature decision to recognise Croatia. And if you want an example of EU foreign policy making on the hoof, and the EU’s pretensions to running a defence policy that have caused real trouble, then look at what has happened in Ukraine. I think it is very, very important that we don’t muddle up the role of the EU with the role of Nato ...
What worries me now is that it is the European Union’s pretensions to run a foreign policy and a defence policy that risk undermining Nato. We saw what happened in Bosnia. We’ve seen what happened in the Ukraine ...
I find if offensive, insulting, irrelevant and positively cretinous to be told – sometimes by people who can barely speak a foreign language – that I belong to a group of small-minded xenophobes; because the truth is it is Brexit that is now the great project of European liberalism, and I am afraid that it is the European Union – for all the high ideals with which it began, that now represents the ancien regime.
It is we who are speaking up for the people, and it is they who are defending an obscurantist and universalist system of government that is now well past its sell by date and which is ever more remote from ordinary voters.
It is above all bizarre for the Remain campaign to say that after the UK agreement of February we are now living in a “reformed” EU, when there has been not a single change to EU competences, not a single change to the Treaty, nothing on agriculture, nothing on the role of the court, nothing of any substance on borders – nothing remotely resembling the agenda for change that was promised in the 2013 Bloomberg speech ...
To call this a reformed EU is an offence against the Trades Descriptions Act, or rather the EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive that of course replaced the Trades Descriptions Act in 2008. The EU system is a ratchet hauling us ever further into a federal structure.
It is deeply corrosive of popular trust in democracy that every year UK politicians tell the public that they can cut immigration to the tens of thousands – and then find that they miss their targets by hundreds of thousands, so that we add a population the size of Newcastle every year, with all the extra and unfunded pressure that puts on the NHS and other public services.
As for the argument that we need the muscle of EU membership, if we are to do trade deals – well, look, as I say, at the results after 42 years of membership. The EU has done trade deals with the Palestinian authority and San Marino. Bravo. But it has failed to conclude agreements with India, China or even America.
Why? Because negotiating on behalf of the EU is like trying to ride a vast pantomime horse, with 28 people blindly pulling in different directions. For decades deals with America have been blocked by the French film industry, and the current TTIP negotiations are stalled at least partly because Greek feta cheese manufacturers object to the concept of American feta. They may be right, aesthetically, but it should not be delaying us in this country.
There is simply no common political culture in Europe; no common media, no common sense of humour or satire; and – this is important – no awareness of each other’s politics, so that the European Union as a whole has no common sense of the two things you need for a democracy to work efficiently. You need trust, and you need shame. There is no trust, partly for the obvious reason that people often fail to understand each other’s languages. There is no shame, because it is not clear who you are letting down if you abuse the EU system.
That is why there is such cavalier waste and theft of EU funds: because it is everybody’s money, it is nobody’s money.
12.55pm BST
Here is the full text of Boris Johnson’s speech.
I will be posting a summary very soon.
12.39pm BST
Here’s a Guardian video a clip from David Cameron’s speech.
12.30pm BST
Here is Lucy Thomas, deputy director of Britain Stronger in Europe, on Boris Johnson’s speech.
Curious for Boris to moan about Single Market red tape when outside we'd still have to meet its rules & standards but with no say over them
Boris sounds an awfully long way away from this when he was "the only politician to admit being pro-immigation" https://t.co/6ueypA5SUH
12.12pm BST
Johnson says he does not accept that leaving the EU would leave to world war three breaking out.
He says he wants Washington to keep its focus very much on Nato.
12.11pm BST
Q: George Osborne says the next Tory leader will have to be serious, sober and principled. Do you agree?
Johnson says he is glad to hear Osborne is principled.
12.10pm BST
Q: You have accused Cameron of misleading the public. You could not serve in government with him, could you?
Johnson says he is a “humble, ex-municipal toenail”.
12.09pm BST
Q: Could a future Conservative leader or prime minister bring this back for another vote if Britain votes to stay in?
Johnson says he is confident people will vote to leave the EU.
12.07pm BST
Q: What do you see as the risks of Brexit?
Johnson says people running scare stories about world war three, or the bubonic plague or whatever, may undermine people’s confidence in what Britain can achieve.
12.06pm BST
Q: [From ITV’s Robert Peston] In your book on Churchill you said the EU had been successful at keeping peace. Have you changed your mind?
Johnson says that Churchill wanted a European union, but he wanted Britain to play no part in it.
12.05pm BST
Q: [From Michael Crick] If the EU is so bad, shouldn’t we stay in it and reform it?
Johnson says he understands this argument. But Britain has tried to achieve reform, without success, he says.
12.04pm BST
Q: Hasn’t Cameron got a point about the EU promoting peace?
Johnson says that if Cameron really thought leaving the EU would lead to “world war three” breaking out, he would not have threatened to leave if he did not get his way in his EU renegotiation.
12.02pm BST
Johnson is now on his peroration.
It is we in the Leave Camp – not they – who stand in the tradition of the liberal cosmopolitan European enlightenment – not just of Locke and Wilkes, but of Rousseau and Voltaire; and though they are many, and though they are well-funded, and though we know that they can call on unlimited taxpayer funds for their leaflets, it is we few, we happy few who have the inestimable advantage of believing strongly in our cause, and that we will be vindicated by history; and we will win for exactly the same reason that the Greeks beat the Persians at Marathon – because they are fighting for an outdated absolutist ideology, and we are fighting for freedom.
That is the choice on June 23
12.00pm BST
Johnson is now on to the third and final “myth” he wants to address. (See 11.37am.)
To to get to the third key point of the Remainers – if we leave the EU we will not, repeat not, be leaving Europe. Of all the arguments they make, this is the one that infuriates me the most. I am a child of Europe. I am a liberal cosmopolitan and my family is a genetic UN peacekeeping force.
I can read novels in French and I can sing the Ode to joy in German and if they keep accusing me of being a Little Englander, I will ...
Both as editor of the Spectator and Mayor of London I have promoted the teaching of modern European languages in our schools. I have dedicated much of my life to the study of the origins of our common – our common -European culture and civilization in ancient Greece and Rome.
So I find if offensive, insulting, irrelevant and positively cretinous to be told – sometimes by people who can barely speak a foreign language – that I belong to a group of small-minded xenophobes; because the truth is it is Brexit that is now the great project of European liberalism, and I am afraid that it is the European Union – for all the high ideals with which it began, that now represents the ancien regime.
11.56am BST
Johnson moves on to this vision of what Britain will be like if it leaves the EU.
If we leave on June 23, we can still provide leadership in so many areas. We can help lead the discussions on security, on counter-terrorism, on foreign and defence policy, as we always have. But all those conversation can be conducted within an intergovernmental framework, and without the need for legal instruments enforced by the European Court of Justice. We will still be able to cooperate on the environment, on migration, on science and technology; we will still have exchanges of students.
We will trade as much as ever before, if not more. We will be able to love our fellow Europeans, marry them, live with them, share the joy of discovering our different cultures and languages – but we will not be subject to the jurisdiction of a single court and legal system that is proving increasingly erratic and that is imitated by no other trading group.
11.55am BST
Johnson says he has five questions that Leave must relentlessly ask the Remain campaign.
1 - How can you possibly control EU immigration into this country?
2 - The living wage is an excellent policy, but how will you stop it being a big pull factor for uncontrolled EU migration, given that it is far higher than minimum wages in other EU countries?
11.54am BST
Johnsons says he does not accept that the EU is a force for peace.
I saw the disaster when the EU was charged with sorting out former Yugoslavia, and I saw how Nato sorted it out.
11.52am BST
Johnson says the EU is centralising when it should be devolving.
As Jean-Claude Juncker has himself remarked with disapproval, “too many Europeans are returning to a national or regional mindset”. In the face of that disillusionment, the European elites are doing exactly the wrong thing. Instead of devolving power, they are centralizing ...
In Austria the far-right have just won an election for the first time since the 1930s. The French National Front are on the march in France, and Marine le Pen may do well in the Presidential elections. You could not say that EU integration is promoting either mutual understanding or moderation, and the economic consequence range from nugatory to disastrous.
11.50am BST
Johnson says today the EU flag is flying in Europe because it is Schuman day.
It is the birthday of the founder of this project, and the elites have decreed that it should be properly marked.
Do we feel loyalty to that flag? Do our hearts pitter-patter as we watch it flutter over public buildings? On the contrary. The British share with other EU populations a growing sense of alienation, which is one of the reasons turn-out at European elections continues to decline.
11.49am BST
Johnson says the EU has failed to create this European consciousness.
Almost 60 years after the Treaty of Rome, I do not see many signs that this programme is working. The European elites have indeed created an ever-denser federal system of government, but at a pace that far exceeds the emotional and psychological readiness of the peoples of Europe. The reasons are obvious.
There is simply no common political culture in Europe; no common media, no common sense of humour or satire; and – this is important – no awareness of each other’s politics, so that the European Union as a whole has no common sense of the two things you need for a democracy to work efficiently. You need trust, and you need shame. There is no trust, partly for the obvious reason that people often fail to understand each other’s languages. There is no shame, because it is not clear who you are letting down if you abuse the EU system.
11.47am BST
Johnson says there is no proper economic case for staying in the EU. The whole project is political, he says.
He goes back to the origins of the EU.
There were two brilliant Frenchmen – a wheeler-dealing civil servant with big American connexions called Jean Monnet, and a French foreign minister called Robert Schuman. They wanted to use instruments of economic integration to make war between France and Germany not just a practical but a psychological impossibility.
It was an exercise in what I believe used to be called behavioural therapy; inducing a change in the underlying attitudes by forcing a change in behaviour. Their inspired idea was to weave a cat’s cradle of supranational legislation that would not only bind the former combatants together, but create a new sensation of European-ness.
11.46am BST
Johnson says the EU has been poor at concluding trade deals.
As for the argument that we need the muscle of EU membership, if we are to do trade deals – well, look, as I say, at the results after 42 years of membership. The EU has done trade deals with the Palestinian authority and San Marino. Bravo. But it has failed to conclude agreements with India, China or even America.
Why? Because negotiating on behalf of the EU is like trying to ride a vast pantomime horse, with 28 people blindly pulling in different directions. For decades deals with America have been blocked by the French film industry, and the current TTIP negotiations are stalled at least partly because Greek feta cheese manufacturers object to the concept of American feta. They may be right, aesthetically, but it should not be delaying us in this country.
11.44am BST
Johnson dismisses claims that being outside the EU would harm the City.
I hear again the arguments from the City of London, and the anxieties that have been expressed. We heard them 15 years ago, when many of the very same Remainers prophesied disaster for the City of London if we failed to join the euro. They said all the banks would flee to Frankfurt. Well, Canary Wharf alone is now far bigger than the Frankfurt financial centre – and has kept growing relentlessly since the crash of 2008.
11.44am BST
Johnson says the UK does not need to be in the EU to promote trade and competition.
There are plenty of other parts of the world where the free market and competition has been driving down the cost of mobile roaming charges and cut-price airline tickets – without the need for a vast supranational bureaucracy enforced by a supranational court.
11.42am BST
Johnson says all three arguments are bogus.
He turns to the first argument.
What the government wants is for us to remain locked into the Single Market law-making regime, and to be exposed to 2500 new EU regulations a year. What we want is for Britain to be like many other countries in having free-trade access to the territory covered by the Single Market – but not to be subject to the vast, growing and politically-driven empire of EU law.
Did Britain export more to the rest of the EEC 11, as a result of the Single Market? On the contrary, the rate of growth slowed, as Michael Burrage has shown this year. British exports of goods were actually 22 per cent lower, at the end of the second 20 year period, than if they had continued to grow at the rate of the 20 years pre-1992. And before you say that this might be just a result of Britain’s sluggish performance in the export of manufactured goods, the same failure was seen in the case of the 12 EEC countries themselves.
We were told that goods would start pinging around the EEC as if in some supercharged cyclotron; and on the contrary, the rate of growth flattened again – 14.6 per cent lower than the previous 20 years when there was no single market.
11.37am BST
Johnson says there are three myths the Leave side need to tackle.
First, that leaving the EU would harm the economy.
11.36am BST
Johnson says it is time to tell the EU we need a new partnership with them.
11.36am BST
Johnson says Cameron failed to get what he hoped for in his renegotiation.
He says the EU plans to go ahead with further integration.
The Five Presidents’ report makes it clear that as soon as the UK referendum is out of the way, they will proceed with new structures of political and fiscal integration that this country should have no part in, but which will inevitably involve us, just as we were forced – in spite of promises to the contrary – to take part in the bail-out of Greece. They want to go ahead with new EU rules on company law, and property rights and every aspect of employment law and even taxation – and we will be dragged in.
To call this a reformed EU is an offence against the Trades Descriptions Act, or rather the EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive that of course replaced the Trades Descriptions Act in 2008. The EU system is a ratchet hauling us ever further into a federal structure.
11.34am BST
Johnson says David Cameron’s Bloomberg speech was “excellent”.
Cameron said the biggest danger to the EU was not from those who advocated change, but from those who resisted change.
11.32am BST
Johnson says it is absurd that Britain, a free trade nation, has not been able to secure its own free trade agreement with Australia, New Zealand, China, India or America for the last 42 years.
11.31am BST
Johnson says our gross contribution to the EU is £20bn, and our net contribution is £10bn a year.
That money is not being spent wisely, he says.
11.28am BST
Johnson sets out the many areas where the EU has power.
It is also in total control of monetary policy for all 19 Eurzone countries.
11.26am BST
Boris Johnson is speaking now.
He says he was told that, as a “liberal cosmopolitan”, he should not be voting to leave the EU. But others like him, like David Owen and Gisela Stuart, feel the same way.
11.19am BST
And this is from the Sun’s Harry Cole.
Now it's "standing in the way of control" at the Vote Leave disco. Someone clearly typed "leave" "Europe", "out" and "go" etc into Spotify
11.18am BST
Boris Johnson is speaking at the Vote Leave HQ.
They’ve had fun choosing the music to play before he starts. This is from the Telegraph’s Steven Swinford.
At Vote Leave HQ ahead of Boris Johnson speech they've got a Brexit playlist - Final Countdown, Go Your Own Way, Love Will Tear You Apart...
11.16am BST
Boris Johnson should be delivering his EU speech shortly.
We should have a live feed at the top of this blog once he gets going. There is also a link to a live feed here.
We will be live streaming Boris Johnson's speech on our Facebook page from 11:15am: https://t.co/Xf94K4wuIV pic.twitter.com/OKmeq0AK0Y
11.14am BST
And here are two more tweets picking up on the point about whether David Cameron was sincere when he hinted he might recommend leaving the EU if he did not get what he wanted in his EU renegotation.
From the Daily Telegraph’s Christopher Hope
One Tory MP to me: If the PM thinks the referendum could pave the way to war, why is he risking lives in having it?
If PM believes a word of what he's saying this am, then threatening Brexit over "benefit tourism" myth was height of irresponsibility.
11.11am BST
And this is from Mark Urban, Newsnight’s diplomatic editor.
While Cameron gives his 'War and Peace' speech, Russian tanks take part in Victory Day parade pic.twitter.com/A0H78YmIVN via @AlexKokcharov
11.11am BST
This is from Patrick Wintour, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor.
Dilemma. Every time Cameron ups the risks of Brexit, his motive for calling ref is more scrutinised. EG Risk a European war to neuter Ukip.
11.08am BST
The full text of David Cameron’s speech is now on the Number 10 website.
11.07am BST
David Cameron was introduced by David Miliband, the former Labour foreign secretary, at his speech at the British Museum this morning. In his very short speech Miliband delivered a concentrated version of Cameron’s argument. Here are some key quotes.
That is why I say that withdrawal from the EU would be the greatest voluntary renunciation of political power by any country in peacetime history. And that is why the Project Fantasy of a strong Britain outside the EU needs to be exposed. It is just a fantasy to believe that Britain will negotiate trade deals on its own terms, lead on climate change or protect ourselves from instability in the neighborhood outside the EU.
Europe is the way an increasing number of vital British interests are fulfilled in the world today. And where they are unfulfilled, in respect of dealings with Russia or intelligence sharing across Europe or engagement in North Africa, it is not because there is too much Europe but because there is too little.
Britain has a massive interest in a good trade deal with the US. That can only be achieved through the EU.
I am sure it will be easy to poke fun at our unusual and temporary alliance. But actually it is a sobering reflection of what is at issue. There is a centre-left case for Britain’s membership of the EU. There is a centre-right case for Britain’s membership. Together they add up to a compelling national case, and they need to be brought together in a way that is positive, patriotic and effective.
10.51am BST
The Daily Mail has devoted an editorial to David Cameron’s speech, written on the basis of the excerpts that were briefed overnight. The Mail (which, arguably, is somewhat of an authority on the subject) is accusing Cameron of scaremongering. Here’s an excerpt.
In an extraordinary escalation of Project Fear, David Cameron warns today that Europe risks sliding back into war and genocide if Britain dares to leave the EU.
One question: if he honestly believes the dangers are so great, why on Earth did he call the referendum in the first place?
10.43am BST
In an article in the Daily Telegraph, which seems to have been written before he was aware of what David Cameron would be saying in his speech today, Julian Lewis, the Conservative chair of the Commons defence secretary, ridicules the idea that the EU has made war in Europe inconceivable.
In deterring external threats, the EU adds nothing but risk and uncertainty to the exemplary role discharged by Nato; but what about its pompous claim to have made war between its own members “inconceivable”? EU leaders urge Brexit supporters to visit the vast military cemeteries in France and Belgium – as if the dead supported their notion of a single European superstate.
They dishonour the memory of those who fought for the rights of the British people, and of the captive peoples of occupied Europe, to govern themselves within free, constitutional and democratic countries. There is no risk of western European states going to war with each other, as long as they remain free, democratic and constitutional. Constitutional democracies do not attack one another. Wars break out between dictatorships and other dictatorships, or between dictatorships and democracies, as in 1939.
10.31am BST
And here is the Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, a leading Brexit campaigner, on Cameron’s speech.
A reminder that, just four months ago, the PM was threatening to leave the EU over an unbelievably trivial tweak to benefits rules.
Remainers like to think of themselves as sensible moderates. But this hysterical language is coming from their side.
10.27am BST
Here is Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, on David Cameron’s speech.
Far from being a cause of peace, the EU has increased hostility in Europe.
Ultimately it is a lack of democracy that leads to war and conflict. The EU's crushing of democracy in Greece has led to extremism.
Does Mr. Cameron really think the violent clashes in Athens last night represent peace?
The anti-democratic EU, far from bringing countries together, has divided Europe.
Failed Euro project has had a devastating impact on lives of citizens across Europe who have suffered at the hands of the EU nationalists.
10.14am BST
The Today programme also interviewed Penny Mordaunt, the pro-Brexit defence minister, about David Cameron’s speech. Here are the main points she made.
The prime minister today is trying to tap into a vision, which I think we all share, of nations living in peace, looking West, secure and prosperous. What is being debated though is that the EU is a necessary to that, and I would actually argue that its current trajectory is absolutely counter to that.
Look, the reason why the EU is not delivering either on security or economic prosperity is because it is not doing what its nation states need in order to thrive. It is causing tremendous fragmentation, the rise of far-right politics – all the things that the Prime Minister is warning us could happen if we leave are here now today.
As well as it being a better deal for the UK, [Bexit] will give the remaining EU states a catalyst for reform. You could see to the tail end of the prime minister’s negotiations other nations saying ‘do you know actually that sounds very sensible, we ought to have some of that too’. We have tried absolutely everything to get the EU to reform from within, this is our last chance I think to get it to start to get back to its democratic principles to actually start doing what its nation states need, both in terms of security and economic prosperity.
Look, no head of state or prime minister or president is going to want to annoy our prime minister. There is a big long list of admirals, generals, former head of the CIA, former [head] of MI6, who think that we will be safer if we leave the EU.
9.44am BST
While David Cameron was delivering his speech, Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, was on the Today programme talking about it. Here are the main points.
The European Union will be weaker without Britain inside it, and the mechanism that ensure the peace and stability on the continent will be consummately weaker.
We run the risks of tensions rising in parts of Europe which perhaps do not have the deep and enduring democratic roots that we and our immediate neighbours have and in the areas just outside the European Union, the Balkans for example, closely associated with the EU and would-be member states, where the EU has significant influence.
Monday's Daily Mail front page -
EU vote: Now PM warns of war and genocide#tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers #euref pic.twitter.com/4hdszHW8NZ
Monday's Telegraph front page:
Cameron: leaving EU could bring war#tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers #euref pic.twitter.com/g1sEii6qGT
Monday's Times front page:
Brexit will raise risk of world war, PM claims#tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers #euref pic.twitter.com/kAaizQgBbh
I don’t write the headlines in some of our newspapers. What I’m saying is that the European Union is an important contributor to the stability and the peace that we enjoy in Europe. That is in Britain’s interest and history tells us that Britain is a European power, it’s a global power as well, but it’s a European power and it cannot turn its back on what’s going on in Europe. We have to be concerned about what’s going on in Europe.
With my hand on my heart I can tell you, that not in any one of those countries, has anyone told me Britain would be a more influential power, a more important partner if we are outside the European Union, quite the contrary.
It’s not acceptable in a democracy to say this is an inappropriate question to put to the people.
9.09am BST
Comments were left off earlier by mistake. I’m sorry about that. They are on now.
9.06am BST
Q: Aren’t you scaremongering? Won’t people disbelieve you?
Cameron says things like conflict in the Ukraine are facts.
9.00am BST
Q: [From ITV’s Robert Peston] You are making a very serious charge against cabinet colleagues, that they would willingly expose the UK to a greater risk of war and terrorism. Can you work with these people in cabinet.
Cameron says he is working with them right now.
8.58am BST
Q: [From the Dutch ambassador] Your views on EU membership are the same as the Dutch government’s. Boris Johnson is probably sharpening his bicycle spokes to stick them in your arguments. How will you facilitate a more informed debate. I often hear cabbies saying you are spending 10% of GDP on EU membership, when it is 0.5%. And what are your priorities for your presidency of the EU.
Cameron says if we left the EU, the hit to tax revenues would be many times greater than the amount we would gain from paying less in.
8.53am BST
Cameron is now taking questions.
Q: [From the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg] If leaving the EU could lead to war, why did you offer a referendum in the first place? Isn’t this just alarmist?
8.51am BST
So next month we will make our choice, he says.
The EU benefits from having Britain in it.
8.48am BST
Cameron says the UK’s friends and biggest trading partners around the world want Britain to stay in the EU.
8.46am BST
Cameron says leaving the EU could also diminish the UK by leading to its break-up, with Scotland going independent.
8.46am BST
Cameron says he has three examples of how being in the EU has amplified UK power.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, it looked as if the EU might adopt a feeble response. But Cameron pushed for tough sanctions.
8.43am BST
Cameron says our EU membership magnifies our national power.
In the last 40 years our global power has increased.
8.39am BST
Cameron says being part of the EU helps the UK tackle threats such as the one posed by Islamic State. Quoting the historian Niall Ferguson, he says it takes a network to tackle a network.
Cameron says he accepts that, if we left the EU, we would still be able to cooperate with other EU countries on security. But he says this process would be more complex, and access to vital information would be slower.
8.34am BST
Cameron is now going through these four arguments in more detail.
He says Britain has been involved in European affairs for 2,000 years.
From Caesar’s legions to the wars of the Spanish succession, from the Napoleonic wars to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Proud as we are of our global reach and our global connections, Britain has also always been a European power, and we always will be.
The moments of which we are rightly most proud in our national story include pivotal moments in European history. Blenheim. Trafalgar. Waterloo.
Our country’s heroism in the Great War.
It wasn’t through choice that we were alone. Churchill never wanted that. Indeed he spent the months before the Battle of Britain began trying to keep our French allies in the war, and then after France fell, he spent the next 18 months persuading the United States to come to our aid.
And in the post-war period he argued passionately for Western Europe to come together, to promote free trade, and to build institutions which would endure so that our continent would never again see such bloodshed.
Whenever we turn our back on Europe, sooner or later we come to regret it. We have always had to go back in, and always at much higher cost.
The serried rows of white headstones in lovingly-tended Commonwealth war cemeteries stand as silent testament to the price this country has paid to help restore peace and order in Europe.
Can we be so sure that peace and stability on our continent are assured beyond any shadow of doubt? Is that a risk worth taking? I would never be so rash as to make that assumption.
The European Union has helped reconcile countries which were at each others’ throats for decades.
Britain has a fundamental national interest in maintaining common purpose in Europe to avoid future conflict between European countries.
8.25am BST
Cameron says there are four reasons why staying in the EU makes us safer.
First, what happens in Europe affects us, whether we are in the EU or not.
8.21am BST
Cameron says this is a great country, not just in the history books, but now.
We are the fifth largest economy in the world, and Europe’s foremost military power.
8.18am BST
Cameron says his main focus today will not be on the economic case for staying in the EU, strong as it is, but on the arguments about security.
He says he wants to set out the “big, bold patriotic case” for staying in the EU.
8.16am BST
Cameron says the Leave campaign have noticed that some countries in Europe outside the EU have free trade agreements with the EU. They call this the European free trade zone.
But no such thing exists, he says.
8.13am BST
Cameron says an OECD survey has shown that Britain has the best regulatory regime, second only to the Netherlands, which is also in the EU.
That disproves the claim that EU membership leads to the UK being tied up in too much red tape, he says.
8.12am BST
David Cameron is speaking now.
He says people will vote on 23 June calmly, as they always have in British elections.
8.09am BST
David Cameron is speaking at the British Museum. David Miliband, the former Labour foreign secretary, is introducing him.
Look who's back! @DMiliband introducing @David_Cameron #EUref speech. #Brexit #EUreferendum pic.twitter.com/9Ri2oAABut
David MIliband introducing the PM at this event - amazing venue of British Museum, audience full of diplomats
8.05am BST
If you’re not interested in the EU referendum, it’s probably best to stay away from this blog for the next seven weeks. With the local, mayoral and devolved elections over, EU referendum campaigning is intenstifying, starting this morning with a speech from David Cameron.
Here’s the Guardian’s preview story.
Can we be so sure that peace and stability on our continent are assured beyond any shadow of doubt? Is that a risk worth taking? I would never be so rash as to make that assumption.
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