BORIS Johnson’s was last night accused of masterminding Project Hate, a campaign to stir up resentment against migrants, in his bid to win more voters over to the Leave campaign.
The charge came from the new Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, who attacked his predecessor in the final televised clash of the referendum campaign.
It was a bad-tempered debate in front of 6,000 people in Wembley Arena, with each side accusing the other of lying.
Standing alongside Khan on the Remain side were Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson and TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady, while
Boris was flanked by Labour MP Gisela Stuart and environment minister Andrea Leadsom.
It was the second question on immigration that saw any attempt at politeness between the debaters fall away sharply.
“Immigration has brought huge economic, cultural and social benefits to our country,” Khan said.
“EU migrants – more than 130,000 work in the NHS and social care, thank you.
“EU migrants – working in our schools and our construction sector, thank you.
“More than 1.5 million Brits are employed by companies owned by EU citizens here, thank you.
“And the problem is this Boris, you might start off by saying how wonderful immigration is. But your campaign hasn’t been Project Fear, it’s been Project Hate as far as immigration is concerned.”
Johnson hit back, pointing out that Khan had once said talking about immigration should not be conflated with prejudice.
The Tory MP said: “I do agree with Sadiq, I think you need a grown-up approach to this, I’m passionately a believer in immigration, but it’s got to be controlled.
“When you’ve got numbers running at 184,000 net from the EU, 77,000 coming without even the offer of a job last year, it’s obviously time to take back control.”
The angriest clashes were the “blue-on-blue” attacks between Davidson and Johnson, and Davidson and Leadsom.
Many times, the Scottish Tory leader, accused her fellow party members of telling outright lies.
In one particular exchange, Davidson said Leadsom’s claim about 60 per cent of UK laws being made in Europe was not true.
“It is not good enough,” Davidson said. “You deserve the truth,” she said to the audience.
Recent analysis by the House of Commons Library showed that 13 per cent of UK law comes from the EU.
O’Grady was booed and accused of Project Fear tactics when she said leaving the EU would result in job losses and poor conditions and more zero-hour contracts.
“When we talk about wages, the TUC has looked at all the hard evidence, and what it shows, what we can see, is that in the long run, because our economy would be hit, good jobs like the ones in BMW and the car factories would be replaced by worse ones like Sports Direct and zero hours, and Wetherspoons for that matter.”
In many ways, it was a debate between mothers and lawyers: the intuition of the Leave side, who repeatedly used the phrase, “as a mother”, and the lawyers such as Khan who said to trust the experts on the economy, on defence and on immigration. “Take back control”, the other slogan of the Leave campaigners was used repeatedly, to the point where the audience groaned when it was mentioned.
In their final summations, Davidson said Leave did not have all the answers, and that the Britain she loves does not walk away from other countries.
Johnson said there was a very clear choice between Remain who offer fear, and Leave, who offer hope. “The other side run the country down. We believe in Britain,” he said.
Host David Dimbleby brought the debate to a close, saying he hoped the session had clarified some of the issues. Though some of the issues around the EU may still remain murky, the fault-lines in the Tory party were clear to see.
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