Daily Debrief April 19th

Brexit campaigns unite against ‘overbearing’ EU

I wrote yesterday of the impending sight that would warm the hearts of all Brexit campaigners. Well, last night it was to be seen in Stoke-on-Trent as Conservative Commons Leader Chris Grayling joined Nigel Farage on stage at a GO! rally in the heart of the Potteries. The Daily Mail reports that Brexit rivalry has now been put to one side and pro-leave forces have joined to drive home the message of why we should all be better off out.

We in UKIP know that without Nigel and the support of our determined membership, there would almost certainly be no referendum taking place in June. It’s right that the Brexit campaign should be truly cross-party and so let us give credit to Chris Grayling MP for recognising the crucial role that our leader and our party have played in getting Britain to this point, and for campaigning alongside us as we move to make 23^rd June our Independence Day.

 ‘Merkel has great legs’ – Tory MP mocks Osborne over £4,300 ‘worse off’ claim

In yesterday’s debrief, my headline item was the firing of Osborne’s big (and bogus) bazooka – “Brexit will cost £4,300 per household”. As a neat addition to that story, Greg Heffer of the Express writes on the mocked up version of Treasury sums, produced and circulated by Conservative MP for Peterborough, Stewart Jackson.  The mock up – which was scribbled intentionally on the back of an envelope – had some great lines (‘Merkel has great legs’ among them) and was designed specifically to poke fun at the Chancellor. It has a serious point to it, though. Osborne is now in full attack mode on Brexit, using his position and self-proclaimed excellence in financial oversight to plant damaging and misleading headlines into the media about Britain post-EU. What he’s saying is just plain wrong, and we must face down his political posturing with the facts which I outlined in yesterday’s debrief.   

Costs of blackout emergency plan soar

As UKIP Energy Spokesman, I’ve repeatedly warned of the very real danger we face as a country due to our diminishing generating capacity. This government’s obsession with renewables, in large part driven by directives from Brussels, has left Britain at risk of a catastrophic nationwide blackout. In such an event, the government has what is called a ‘black start’ plan, which is designed to restore power in the event of such an outage. The Telegraph reports that the cost of ‘black start’ has risen from £22.4 million to £34.7 million a year.

 This plan is dependent upon a number of coal-fired power stations being kept on stand-by, ready to be powered up to full capacity enabling the lights to come back on. The problem is that many of our perfectly good coal-fired power plants have been shut down due to the EU’s Large Combustion Plant Directive. Whereas in Germany, they have disregarded the LCPD and have refurbished more than 20 such plants, in the UK the few we have remaining are now running at a loss.  As outlined in the article, this is due to rising green taxes, cheap gas prices and the growth of renewables. Whilst cheaper gas prices should be supported, green taxes and failed renewable technologies such as windmills need to be shown the door in favour of sensible, proven and reliable power generation via gas, coal and nuclear. British taxpayers can’t keep paying for the Brussels obsession with green energy – and Brexit will mean we no longer have to.

 Polls suggest Remain has 10pt lead over Brexit

A number of papers run with the story today that the ‘Remainians’ now have a 10 point lead over the ‘BeLeavers’ in the latest poll. These reports are somewhat surprising given that many recent polls have suggested that the gap is rapidly closing as Team Brexit continues to make its case and provide the real truths (not the £9 million, tax payer funded propaganda truths of David Cameron) to the British public. Certainly the feeling I’m getting from campaigning on the streets is that if there is a gap, it has us in the lead!

The Independent carries a piece giving details of the poll, but also carrying an interesting interview with Lynton Crosby.

Mr Crosby makes two key observations.

Firstly that the remain side have been successful in planting the notion into the minds of voters that EU membership makes economic sense for Britain. We know that this is simply not the case and much of our literature over the coming weeks will be focused on why the EU makes Britain and British families poorer.

The positive news is that the more outrageous the claims from people like George Osborne become, the more Government propaganda that Downing Street tried to peddle, the more sceptical British voters will be of the case being made to them by the Remain side. We will continue to have faith and confidence in the public’s ability to see through the antics of Messrs Cameron and Osborne.

The second point he makes is that the Leave side haven’t managed to capitalise on voters’ concerns over immigration. Well, I have to tell you, Lynton, that UKIP have been here making that case for years, both in local and national elections.

Whilst others have shied away from talking about immigration, UKIP have driven the debate and are now widely accepted as the political party most trusted when it comes to talking about the current open door policies of Westminster, enshrined in EU legislation. We know that immigration, and in particular the attendant risk to our security, is the number one issue for voters in this referendum and we’ll be working with our Brexit partners to make sure that every voter understands why when they go to the ballot box on 23^rd June.