London Letter: Referendum campaigns a study in contrasts

Arron Banks and Will Straw were a study in contrasts on Thursday morning as the co-founder of Leave.EU and the executive director of Britain Stronger in Europe met in London for their first face-to-face debate about Britain's European Union referendum.

Paunchy, affable and full of self-deprecating humour, the Eurosceptic Banks was still sweating and shivering from a stomach bug he woke up with.

Tall, lean and 13 years younger than Banks, Straw was nimble and articulate, with all the facts at his fingertips about how Britain benefits from being in the EU.

Banks, who was expelled from school for (among other things) selling Communion wine to other boys, skipped university and went on to make about £100 million in insurance.

He met his wife, an aspiring model from Russia, at a Britney Spears concert, and they live in a mansion near Bristol formerly occupied by rock musician Mike Oldfield.

A former Conservative supporter, Banks came to prominence in 2014 when he gave £1 million to Nigel Farage's United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip). The donation was initially £100,000 but Banks multiplied it by 10 after William Hague said he had never heard of him.

Cannabis incident

Straw, who is the son of former

Labour

minister

Jack Straw

, got into a scrape when he was 17, when he was caught trying to sell £10 worth of cannabis to an undercover reporter.

A former president of the students' union at Oxford, he worked as a special adviser in the treasury under Gordon Brown and unsuccessfully contested a parliamentary seat at last year's election.

“We’re absolutely clear that we’re making a positive case,” Straw said during Thursday’s debate. But his arguments focused mainly on the risks to Britain’s economy and national security of leaving the EU, and on the failure of the Leave campaign to paint a plausible picture of life outside the EU.

“So let’s be clear,” he said to Banks.

“We’d have full access to the single market, we’d have an end to free movement, we could pick and choose which rules and regulations we like, and no budget contributions?”

Earlier on Thursday, Britain Stronger in Europe released a video ridiculing the confusion on the Leave side about Britain’s relationship with Europe after a vote to leave.

That confusion is complicated further by the fact that there are two Leave campaigns, Banks's Leave.EU, which has the support of Farage, and Vote Leave, which is backed by Ukip's only MP, Douglas Carswell, and a number of Conservative Eurosceptics.

Banks dismisses Vote Leave as “a Westminster, SW1 campaign”, unlike Leave.EU, which he describes as “grassroots” and “non-political”.

Farage would not, he said, lead the Leave.EU campaign, and he had no interest in recruiting Conservative cabinet ministers to the cause either.

“We don’t want any one leader of the Leave campaign. We want a number of messengers who are non-political,” he said.

Banks genially brushed aside what he called Straw’s “technocratic” arguments against leaving the EU, insisting that, as the world’s sixth-largest economy, Britain could prosper outside.

Far from having to plead with the EU for access to the European single market after a vote to leave, Britain would be seen as too important a market to lose.

“German business will insist that deal is done, not Britain,” he said.

Opinion polls show the two sides to be neck and neck, with a poll by ORB showing the Leave side pulling ahead. When undecided voters are excluded, 54 per cent want Britain to leave, up from 51 per cent a year ago, and 46 per cent want to remain in the EU, down from 49 per cent.

Although immigration is likely to be the most neuralgic issue in the campaign, one of the Leave side’s best talking points is the current state of the EU itself.

In response to a long, earnest question from a German reporter, Banks launched into a riff about the role of the euro in fuelling inequality between northern and southern Europe.

British vs European

“Southern Europe not doing well is a function of

Germany

doing well. You are causing the problem,” he said.

"If you were good Europeans, you'd be sending trillions of pounds to Greece, to Spain, to Italy, to readjust the situation. But you're bad Europeans because you're taking the good bits of Europe but not the bad bits."

If you were good Europeans, the reporter said, you wouldn’t have so many opt-outs.

Banks leaned back, a huge grin spreading over his face.

“I’m not a good European,” he said. “I’m British.”