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| Lord Lawson to lead Conservative movement to leave EU | Lord Lawson to lead Conservative movement to leave EU |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| The former chancellor Lord Lawson has announced he will lead a Conservative party campaign to leave the European Union. | |
| The Eurosceptic peer said he had taken the role as president of the Conservatives for Britain and would lead a cross-party exit movement before the EU referendum, due to take place by the end of next year. | The Eurosceptic peer said he had taken the role as president of the Conservatives for Britain and would lead a cross-party exit movement before the EU referendum, due to take place by the end of next year. |
| Writing in the Times, he warned that David Cameron would secure only “wafer-thin” reforms of the EU. Lawson said it was time for the prime minister and the chancellor, George Osborne, to set out “red lines” in the renegotiation of the UK’s membership. | |
| “A number of my colleagues in the Conservative party are waiting to see what the prime minister negotiates before deciding which way they will vote or whether they will campaign for ‘in’ or ‘out’,” he wrote. “We cannot afford to wait that long. | “A number of my colleagues in the Conservative party are waiting to see what the prime minister negotiates before deciding which way they will vote or whether they will campaign for ‘in’ or ‘out’,” he wrote. “We cannot afford to wait that long. |
| “If we leave the playing field vacant, less moderate, xenophobic voices will dominate the debate and we will fail as soon as the government, the major political parties, the CBI and trade unions declare they are backing the ‘in’ campaign.” | “If we leave the playing field vacant, less moderate, xenophobic voices will dominate the debate and we will fail as soon as the government, the major political parties, the CBI and trade unions declare they are backing the ‘in’ campaign.” |
| He added: “If we were able to secure those reforms I would be delighted. But if we are not I will certainly vote to leave. Sadly, the latter is far more likely.” | |
| Lawson’s intervention comes amid discussions involving Cameron, Osborne and the foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU. | |
| The government is seeking reforms in four core areas: | |
| • Banning EU migrants from claiming in-work benefits for four years.• A British opt-out from the EU’s historic commitment to create an “ever closer union” of the peoples of Europe.• The creation of safeguards for non-eurozone members to ensure they cannot be outvoted in the single market by eurozone members.• Giving national parliaments the right to club together to block EU legislation. | |
| Lawson, who served as chancellor under Margaret Thatcher from 1983 to 1989, voted to stay in the European Common Market – the EU’s predecessor – in 1975, but declared his support for leaving the EU in 2013, arguing that the economic gains “would substantially outweigh the costs”. | |
| The Conservatives for Britain group is expected to join Labour for Britain and Business for Britain to campaign for an out vote. The chief executive of that cross-party campaign group will be Matthew Elliott, founder of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, and the campaign director will be Dominic Cummings, former adviser to the cabinet minister Michael Gove. | |
| Groups are competing to be given official status in the campaigns for and against EU membership in order to be given a government grant and higher spending limits. Each official campaign will be allowed to spend up to £7m, including as much as £600,000 of government money. All other campaigns will be restricted to spending £700,000. | |
| “The ‘in’ campaign will attempt to scare people into believing that if the UK were to leave, investment and jobs would move abroad,” writes Lawson. “They are as wrong about that now as they were when they warned that this would happen if we did not sign up to the euro. | |
| “In fact, the truly risky option in this referendum will be to stay in an unreformed EU, handing over ever more control of our economy and our borders to political bureaucrats whom we cannot vote out and who have made clear that they do not care what we think. If you are as concerned about that as I am, then join with me now in helping to build the campaign to leave.” |