DAVID Cameron is risking the UK’s future with a “deeply depressing” EU campaign that will fail to engage voters, Alex Salmond said yesterday.

Speaking in a debate in the House of Commons, the former First Minister hit out against Cameron’s claims that leaving the European Union would see the Jungle refugee camp travel across the English Channel from Calais, causing a major influx of people seeking citizenship.

Yesterday, Salmond accused Cameron of “gambling this country’s entire European future” and said the In side must up its game to avoid losing the as-yet-unscheduled vote.

He said: “Yesterday’s ludicrous exchange on which side of the Channel a giant refugee camp would be located just about sums up this miserable, irrelevant debate.

“It would take at least five years to withdraw from European treaties. No-one knows how that will affect bi-lateral arrangements between Britain and France. It is a pointless, pathetic, puerile debate typical of a deeply depressing campaign – the political equivalent of a no-score draw.”

He added: “The lead responsibility for this state of affairs lies with the Prime Minister. This whole mess is of his creation.

“The anti-Europeans’ chance of winning has always been if the campaign is reduced to a competition of scare stories, a war of attrition to find out who can tell the biggest porkies.

“That is what is unfolding before our eyes. Cameron is gambling this country’s entire European future on his sham negotiation and campaign.”

The comments came during a debate tabled by Democratic Unionist Party deputy leader Nigel Dodds on the timing of the crucial vote.

Leaders in Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff have all written to Cameron urging him to ensure the referendum, mooted for Thursday, June 23, does not clash with campaign periods for their own parliaments.

If adopted, the move would leave them in purdah for ten of the 13 weeks of the campaign.

Tory Eurosceptic MP Sir Edward Leigh urged the Prime Minister to “bring it on” without delay and Labour frontbencher Pat Glass called for an end to delays to avoid “uncertainty” for business and to let people “get on with their lives”.

However, Dodds said the democratic process for devolved parliaments must be respected, stating: “We are talking about the ability of political parties to campaign and work with others if necessary on these issues, the issues of purdah, the media concentration on European issues to the exclusion of devolved issues.

“We heard a lot about the respect agenda and about taking on board the views of the administrations in the devolved countries of the UK and this now needs to be put into practice. This is a very, very important moment in this parliament as to how the Government will actually respect the devolved administrations.”

Cabinet Office Minister John Penrose stressed no date would be settled until Cameron’s EU negotiations conclude.

However, he said choosing to “bang on” about Europe’s risks “boring everybody to tears and turning everybody off” before the vote is held.

Salmond urged for positivity in the In camp, saying: “What people want to hear is how to build a European future which acts on the environment, which faces down the multi-nationals, which shows solidarity when faced with a refugee crisis, which acts together against austerity, which respects its component nations, which co-operates on great projects like a super-grid across the North Sea and which revitalises the concept of a social Europe for all of our citizens.

“That is a Europe worth voting for, not Cameron’s teeny-weeny vision of nothing much at all.”

The Scottish division of the Britain Stronger In Europe campaign launches in Edinburgh today.