So the day at last has come. What day? The day the EU Referendum Campaign officially ‘begins’. Yes, it has being going on for months, years even, but it is now official. The government is at odds with most of its party, the cabinet is split, Cameron is damaged, Boris is rampant and all sides are saying nasty things about each other. Words like care, warning and caution have been supplanted by the freakish fairytale sounding scaremongering. Labour has come to the rescue of Cameron in that most of its members and voters are for Remain and a lukewarm endorsement came from their leader Jeremy Corbyn yesterday. Essentially his message was there was much about the EU he did not like, but the outcome of leaving would be a good deal worse. World leaders and bankers are lining up to recite various disaster scenarios not just for GB but for half the world if we decide to go.
Leave launch themselves on a proposition of such mathematical gibberish as to make us wonder whether they have a clue what they are doing. Their deal is that if we leave the EU, the £300 million or so a week we send to it could be spent on the NHS. Bingo. Experts of every description and kind, from think tanks, universities and wherever, have lined up on the media to explain that although a gross sum flows out, it passes on its way a lot coming back. And if you take account of the investments made in the UK by the EU in all sorts of areas from environmental improvements to medical research, plus the revenue generated from the foreign direct investment in the UK especially because it is in the EU, you would end up at best with nothing more to spend on the NHS and very likely quite a bit less.