The Conservative Party was plunged further into civil war over Europe last night as two grandees warned that David Cameron may have to quit.
Former party chairmen Lord Tebbit and Liam Fox both suggested that the Prime Minister will be forced to step down if Britain votes to leave the EU.
They spoke out amid growing Tory anger over Mr Cameron’s increasingly strident warnings about the dangers of Brexit.
Writing in yesterday’s Daily Mail, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith accused No 10 of waging a campaign of ‘spin, smears and threats’ in a bid to bully voters into backing the Remain side in June’s referendum.
Former party chairmen Lord Tebbit, left, and Liam Fox, right, both suggested that the Prime Minister will be forced to step down if Britain votes to leave the EU
Mr Cameron brushed aside the warning yesterday to issue fresh claims about the perils of Brexit. Speaking at the Tories Scottish conference in Edinburgh, he claimed that haggis and other Scottish food exports could be hit by swingeing tariffs if the UK leaves the single market.
He suggested that exports of British beef could face tariffs of up to 70 per cent as other nations launch reprisals on Britain. Voting to stay in the EU would not make people ‘less patriotic’, he added.
However, some Tories believe Mr Cameron’s time in office will be cut short even if he wins the referendum. One pro-EU Tory MP said there was now ‘no chance’ of the Prime Minister, who has said he will step down before the 2020 general election, clinging on until 2019.
No 10’s approach has enraged many Tories, who feel the Government machine is being deployed in an attempt to crush those bidding to take Britain out of the EU.
In the past fortnight, the Government has published two ‘dodgy’ dossiers on the risks of leaving, big businesses and have been corralled into issuing statement of support for EU membership and French President Francois Hollande was persuaded to warn that Britain would face reprisals if it left.
Lord Tebbit said it would now be ‘extraordinarily difficult’ for Mr Cameron to continue in office if Britain votes to leave.
Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron speaks at the Scottish Conservatives Conference at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh on Friday
He condemned the ‘silliness’ from Mr Cameron and fellow senior Tories over their warnings that a vote to leave the EU would represent a ‘leap in the dark’. He suggested the Prime Minister ‘probably should’ stand down if he loses the referendum.
Lord Tebbit added that ‘it would be very difficult for him to negotiate for all those things that we need to get settled with our European partners, having said it would be a disaster if we did leave... He would find it extraordinarily difficult to suddenly change sides again’.
Dr Fox, another former party chairman, also backed Mr Duncan Smith’s call for Eurosceptics to be treated with respect – and hinted that Mr Cameron might have to go.
Asked if Mr Cameron could cling on in No 10 after a Brexit vote, he replied: ‘Yes... constitutionally.’
He added: ‘I’ve been saying for a long time to my colleagues they need to understand the binary nature of a referendum, the fact it will arouse a lot of passions.
In fact I’d said to a number of my colleagues that in a referendum friendships get tested, relationships can sour.
‘That’s always the risk when you get into a referendum, especially on something as passionate as the European Union and Britain’s future, control of its own destiny. We simply have to be grown up about that.’
He insisted the claims from the In campaign were all ‘nonsense’.
London Mayor Boris Johnson stepped up his criticism of the Prime Minister’s deal with Brussels, saying Britain would be stuck ‘hook, line and sinker’ in an unreformed EU and be left ‘like the frog in the boiling saucepan of water’ if it votes to stay in.
He added: ‘We will never be able credibly to argue for any reform in Europe again.’
0 nhận xét:
Đăng nhận xét