David Cameron: leave vote would be economic ‘bomb’ for UK

Leaving the EU would detonate a bomb under the British economy, David Cameron has said as he joined with Labour, Lib Dem and Green politicians to argue that the leave campaign was being reckless with people’s futures.
The prime minister appeared with Harriet Harman, Natalie Bennett and Tim Farron to talk about the risks of Brexit and challenge the leave campaign to set out an economic plan.
Cameron said leave campaigners were prepared to make things up to persuade people to opt for Brexit.
“Don’t throw away your job, don’t throw away your children’s futures, don’t throw away the strength and future of our country on the basis of misleading statistics peddled by a campaign determined to say anything and indeed everything to get the outcome they want,” he said. “That is what is happening. Do not be misled. Do not let them persuade you of this reckless course for our country.”
He said there would be a recession, years of uncertainty and weaker trade in the event of Brexit, and the leave campaign had failed to set out how it would deal with those consequences.
“Add those things together – the shock impact, the uncertainty impact, the trade impact – and you put a bomb under our economy,” he said. “And the worst thing is we’d have lit the fuse ourselves.”
Cameron said the event in London was an “unprecedented show of cross-party unity”, and branded the out campaign “undemocratic and reckless” because it had not set out what a vote to leave would mean.

Labour’s Harman said the leave campaign should stop speaking in code and be honest that slashing red tape meant wanting to abolish maternity and paternity rights and holiday entitlements.
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“You’ve said you want to cut red tape and scrap £600m of regulation … Admit that means you would abolish the rights to maternity leave and paternity leave, scrap the laws that stop employers treating part-timers as second-class citizens and which make employers pay for holiday leave,” the Labour former interim leader said.
Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, also supports staying in the EU but will not share a stage with Cameron.
Farron, the Lib Dem leader, said there was a “black hole at the heart of [Brexiters’] spending plans of more than £150bn”, and branded the leave campaign’s claims “fantasy economics”.
Bennett, the Green party’s outgoing leader, asked the leave campaign: “Can you confirm that you intend to abolish environmental protections and measures to tackle climate change?”
She also challenged the media to start treating the referendum as an argument about policy rather than a Conservative party leadership contest.

They set out their case at an event in London shortly before the leading leave figures Boris Johnson and Michael Gove appeared in Stratford-upon-Avon, to claim that the UK would be hit with an extra £2.4bn bill from the EU if it votes to stay.
Asked about the prime minister’s claim that Brexit would place a bomb under the British economy, Gove said he believed in “free speech and democratic debate – a strong culture of people telling it like it is and shooting from the hip”.
The justice secretary said he wanted to argue that the EU undermines NATO and weakens national security. He said the ECJ was a court with a “fundamentally political agenda” to further the cause of European integration. “Indeed the ECJ can over-rule Parliament and strike down our laws, forcing us to accept its rulings.”
Johnson also hit back at the prime minister arguing that it was a “myth and delusion” to suggest that less democratic control would boost prosperity. “The risk of staying in this over-centralising, over-regulating job destroying machine are becoming more and more obvious.”
Despite the bitter feuding between Tories in the two camps, Cameron told BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine show that he had a “self-denying ordinance” not to attack other members of his party.
He said Sir John Major, the former prime minister, was speaking for himself when he said Johnson and Gove posed a danger to the NHS and were running a deceitful campaign “verging on the squalid”.
However, he went on to criticise Michael Gove, the justice secretary, for saying last week that people have “had enough of experts” when asked about economists who supported the leave cause.
Cameron said someone from leave said the other day it was wrong to trust experts but no one would build a bridge without listening to them.