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EU referendum live: Boris Johnson v Sadiq Khan in the BBC's 'Great Debate'
EU referendum live: Boris Johnson v Sadiq Khan in the BBC's Great Debate
(35 minutes later)
7.29pm BST
8.04pm BST
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20:04
BBC's EU Referendum: The Great Debate
Dimbleby says Leave won - when they drew lots to decide who goes first.
The BBC’s “Great Debate” programme will be starting at 8pm. It is being filmed at the SSE Arena, Wembley, and it will be the biggest debate of the campaign.
Gisela Stuart opens for Leave. If we were not in, would we join. If you think not, then vote Leave to take control. She is a mother and a grandmother. 50% of young people in Greece do not have a job. The only continent with a lower growth rate is Antarctica. Sometimes voting does not make much difference. But on Thursday it will.
There are three main speakers on each side and Leave are fielding the same “team” they deployed for the ITV debate: Boris Johnson, the energy minister Andrea Leadsom and the Labour MP Gisela Stuart.
8.02pm BST
But Remain are putting up three new figures: Sadiq Khan, the new Labour mayor of London, Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, and Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC.
20:02
A colleague who has spent a lot of time outside London reporting on the referendum told me recently he thought the contest amounted to “cities, Scotland and lefties” versus the rest. The Remain panel does reflect that to a certain extent.
Dimbley introduces the panel.
6.24pm BST
They will get to make opening statements.
18:24
8.01pm BST
Afternoon summary
20:01
But we’re not finished. We’re going to keep going to cover the BBC debate later.
BBC's EU Referendum 'Great Debate' starts
6.18pm BST
David Dimbleby opens the programme.
18:18
It sounds echoey, the hall is so big. Normally there are only 150 people in a Question Time audience.
As expected (see 2pm), the Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin has complained about David Cameron using Downing Street to make a pro-Remain statement. Jenkin told the Press Association:
8.00pm BST
It’s certainly a breach of the spirit of purdah. Ministers aren’t meant to use public funds or public resources during the purdah period. It can be argued it doesn’t apply to his own residence but I would have thought use of Downing Street facilities is a breach of the spirit of purdah. He would not do that during a general election.
20:00
5.59pm BST
Settling in to the spin room for tonight's Great Debate - last set-piece telly event before Thursday's vote. pic.twitter.com/btqiKdar7Q
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7.58pm BST
This is from the BBC’s Iain Watson.
19:58
Battle of the buses -the opposing camps arrive at Wembley for the BBC Great Debate I'll be reporting for @BBCRadio4 pic.twitter.com/QOD4u4Tmj8
This is from the Telegraph’s Christopher Hope.
5.58pm BST
In the spin room we just watched David Dimbleby speaking to the audience for 10 mins with the sound down. Was he telling jokes? #BBCDebate
17:58
7.57pm BST
Libby Brooks
19:57
Gordon Brown has been speaking in Glasgow, offering “a message from the heart” to undecided voters. Remainers will doubtless be hoping this has a similar effect to his barn-storming performance in September 2014, the day before the Scottish independence referendum, which has since been credited with significantly shifting voting intentions.
Ukip’s Suzanne Evans is already suggesting it’s a fix.
Offering a bespoke Labour message, he told the audience that, while the Conservatives have been speaking to the economically secure, he wanted to reach out to the insecure and anxious:
In the arena & this audience doesn't feel balanced at all. Overheard remainers bragging about coming in on #VoteLeave tickets. #EUDebate
Sometimes it has been Europe that has defended working people against the Conservatives.
Suspicion of this nature is a well-documented Leave trait. See 3.51pm.
In a speech heavily focused on economics, he drove home how much jobs, industries, investment, workers’ rights depended on the EU - “in the next ten years the biggest job creator is going to be the EU”.
7.54pm BST
Tellingly, and unlike his earlier campaign contributions, he addressed immigration head on: we know here in Scotland the contribution made by waves of immigrants, he said, adding: “There is no solution to numbers simply by leaving the EU”.
19:54
5.50pm BST
Biscuits found in the #BBCDebate spin room https://t.co/5we9oLJYhd "That cost one licence fee," says a correspondent pic.twitter.com/ctNMeUzYW5
17:50
7.54pm BST
Brendan Cox, the husband of Jo Cox, has given an interview to the BBC about his wife’s killing. Here are some of the main points.
19:54
She was a politician and she had very strong political views and I believe she was killed because of those views. I think she died because of them, and she would want to stand up for those in death as much as she did in life.
This is from the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush.
I think she was very worried that the language was coarsening, that people were being driven to take more extreme positions, that people didn’t work with each other as individuals and on issues, it was all much too tribal and unthinking.
A stray thought: in this referendum, Frances O'Grady's played a more central role in public debate than any trade union leader in decades.
And she was particularly worried - we talked about this regularly - particularly worried about the direction of, not just in the UK but globally, the direction of politics at the moment, particularly around creating division and playing on people’s worst fears rather than their best instincts. So we talked about that a lot and it was something that worried her.
7.52pm BST
What the public support and outpouring of love around this does, is it also helps the children see that what they’re feeling and other people are feeling, that the grief that they feel, isn’t abnormal, that they feel it more acutely and more painfully and more personally, but that actually their mother was someone who was loved by lots of people and that therefore, it’s OK to be upset and it’s OK for them to cry and to be sad about it ...
19:52
I’ve spent a lot of time in the last couple of days talking to child psychologists, and one of the things they say is that that understanding of it being okay to be sad, and to be distressed, and to talk about it, is really important. So just on that very basic level it makes a really important contribution to their healing I think. And then also it gives us some hope that something positive can come out of something which is so horrendous; that there can be a reaction to this horrific action.
ITV’s Robert Peston has some news for Boris.
No, my only overriding priority at the moment is how I make sure that I protect my family and my kids through this and how they’re okay. I hope that whoever replaces her will become another female member of parliament.
If anyone cares (@BorisJohnson?) I got impression from @David_Cameron interview that no reshuffle before autumn https://t.co/RJWnlynyJ8
5.41pm BST
7.52pm BST
17:41
19:52
Q: Was the language used by people like Farage partly responsible for what happened to Jo Cox?
Updated
Heseltine says he would want to be very cautious about what he says. He says economic factors have raised public concerns about immigration. In America and elsewhere some of the language used in his debate has been deplorable. And the posters. It is not that those using this language intend to inflame. But there are people out there willing to be inflammed.
at 7.54pm BST
Farage says some people on the Remain side are determined to paint him and his party as the bad guys. Cox was killed in an act of terrorism. He says the language used in this referendum has not been as vitriolic as the language used in the Scottish referendum.
7.50pm BST
5.31pm BST
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Here’s the scene in the spin room.
Heseltine says UK will join euro one day - but not in Farage's lifetime
The spin room fills up at the BBC debate -even before a word has been spoken in anger pic.twitter.com/dhXUlegXmW
On LBC Nigel Farage asked Lord Heseltine if he still supported Britain joining the euro. Heseltine said he did:
7.49pm BST
I think there will come a time when Britain will join.
19:49
But Heseltine also this would be “a long time off”. When Farage said he never wanted it to happen, Heseltine told him: “It won’t happen in your lifetime.”.
Mishal Husain is moderating the side panel. She posted this picture on Twitter a moment ago.
Farage said Heseltine was in favour of joining in around 2002. But Heseltine corrected him; he said he was in favour in principle, but that he never thought that the timing or the exchange rate were right.
Panel standing by #bbcdebate pic.twitter.com/4rRIvejewl
5.27pm BST
17:27
This morning Michael Gove, the leading Vote Leave campaigner, responded to the news that David Beckham is backing Remain by saying that the former England player John Barnes backs Leave.
Only Barnes is backing Remain. He has called Sky News to say so.
This is from Sky’s Faisal Islam.
John Barnes phones up our Sky colleagues after he gets a text saying Gove said he was for Leave: "I'm for Remain" pic.twitter.com/QKw2CB0SVG
And these are from Sky’s Beth Rigby.
BREAK: John Barnes said he told #voteleave he was not a supporter a couple of says ago & was "categorically clear" he supported #remain.
John Barnes tells @skynews is "flabbergasted" that "the British are the first to jump ship when the going gets tough"
On immigration issue, John Barnes says the scaremongering about EU citizens "is what we heard in the 60s/70s about black people"
5.23pm BST
17:23
On LBC Farage and Heseltine are talking about the economic impact of Brexit. Asked about the Institute for Fiscal Studies report saying the Brexit could cost the government up to £40bn, Farage responds by saying it receives 75% of its money from the government and the EU. Heseltine says Farage is trashing one of the most respected economic bodies in the country. And it is not just the IFS making these predictions, he says. He says the IMF said much the same. Farage does not have any economic organisations backing his case, Heseltine says.
5.18pm BST
17:18
The Queen has been asking dinner companions to name “three good reasons why Britain should be part of Europe”, the Telegraph reports. The revelation comes from Robert Lacey, a royal biographer.
Here’s an extract from the Telegraph’s story.
Her Majesty’s biographer, Robert Lacey, reported the Queen’s comments and suggested they may mean the Queen favours withdrawal from the European Union.
Buckingham Palace would neither confirm nor deny that the Queen had been debating the merits of Brexit in private, but royal sources pointed out that the words attributed to the Queen were “a question not a statement”.
However the leading nature of the alleged question adds weight to previous claims that the Queen would like Britain to pull out of the EU.
5.13pm BST
17:13
Nigel Farage debates Lord Heseltine on LBC
Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, is now debating Lord Heseltine, the pro-European former deputy prime minister, on LBC.
Q: Why is there so much pressure on housing?
Heseltine says this is a question about immigration. And half the immigrants coming to the UK from outside the EU. The government could cut immigration from outside the EU. But it has not done that because the economy needs immigrants, for example to work in care homes.
Farage says we need to build one new home every four minutes. We cannot make plans for the future because we don’t know how many people will come into the country.
He says he thinks immigration from the EU will get even higher.
Heseltine says Farage is wrong. Heseltine says he works with the Department for Communities, and they do plan for the future.
Farage asks if the government is planning for net migration being below 100,000.
Heseltine says we have more people in employment than ever. Most people have homes and school places for their children. It is “ludicrous” to suggest that are large numbers of people without housing.
Farage says it is okay for Heseltine’s class of people. But for ordinary people in London getting on the housing ladder is impossible.
Heseltine says Farage is trying to turn this into a class battle. He says he is working on an estate regeneration programme for the government.
4.56pm BST
16:56
Survation poll gives Remain a 1-point lead
Survation has published a new poll this afternoon, and the headline figures give Remain a one-point lead.
NEW #EURef poll from Survation / @IGcom: LEAVE 44% (+2); REMAIN 45% (NC); Undecided 11% (-2) https://t.co/5Xoyn952H6
When don’t knows are excluded, these figures are equivalent to:
Remain: 51%
Leave: 49%
But Survation says that it also asked a question forcing the undecideds to decide, and that this produced a 50/50 dead heat.
4.40pm BST
16:40
This is from the Daily Mail’s Jason Groves.
In private, I'm told Cameron highlighting Brexit gridlock + telling wavering Tories: 'You don't really want 3 years of Euro-wank, do you?'
David Cameron’s Number 10 statement (see 2pm) would have been a lot more interesting if he had included this argument ...
