DAVID Cameron has been told to “stay away from Scotland” during the EU referendum.
The call came yesterday from SNP MP Pete Wishart during business questions in the House of Commons. The minister answering was Leader of the House Chris Grayling, one of the seven members of the Cabinet who will oppose the Prime Minister in backing a vote to leave the EU.
Wishart said Grayling should tell his “no longer good friend, the Prime Minister” to “please stay away from Scotland for the next few months” as his influence could only be negative.
He continued: “We value our European membership in Scotland, so will the Prime Minister please stay away? In the meantime, there is a warm invitation to the Leader of the House, the Justice Secretary (Michael Gove) and the Mayor of London (Boris Johnson) to come to Scotland any time.”
Grayling said he would be in Scotland “in about 10 days’ time” and would be “whipping up support for the Conservative campaign, which has a really good chance of consigning the Labour party to third place in the Scottish elections”.
There was laughter, however, when he suggested that he and the Prime Minister and Michael Gove were still “good friends”. Most of that laughter came from MPs on Labour benches enjoying a rare chance not to be the most divided political party in Westminster.
Reports from a source close to the Prime Minister had earlier in the day suggested Gove should not be allowed to remain as Justice Secretary in the Government as he had challenged the legal basis of Cameron’s negotiated deal, saying the European Court of Justice would not be bound by the agreement.
A spokesman for Number 10 said: “The PM has full confidence in Michael Gove as Justice Secretary. It doesn’t take more than three seconds of thought to know that this is rubbish.”
Outside of Parliament, the British Stronger In Europe campaign claimed that Britain leaving the EU would see UK charities losing out on more than £200 million.
Green MP Caroline Lucas, who is on the board of the campaign, said that 249 different UK charities and third-sector organisations had benefited from over £217m in funding from the EU in 2014 and there was no guarantee that this would continue in the event of a vote to leave.
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