David Cameron has been accused of “scaremongering” after repeating his claim that the terrorists of Islamic State would be pleased to see Britain leave the European Union.
Mr Cameron told a special referendum edition of BBC One's Question Time that the major nations of Europe were "safer together" against the threat from Islamic State, also known as Isis. But he was accused by one audience member of "scaremongering rather than portraying the facts".
The prime minister also repeated chancellor George Osborne's warning that a vote for Brexit would mean the government having to stage an emergency budget, raising taxes and cutting spending, in response to the expected damage to the economy – something that was branded by one audience member a "punishment for voters, which would risk pushing the economy into a depression when it would already be reeling from the shock of Brexit".
Challenged over his previous claim that Isis leaders want Britain to quit the EU, Mr Cameron said: “I think the terrorists that want to do us harm want the West to be divided. They don’t want Britain and France and Belgium and Germany to work together to defeat terrorism. They’d like to see us separate from each other.”
But one member of the audience in Milton Keynes asked him: “Do you think by comparing the EU referendum to Isis, you are merely scaremongering rather than portraying the facts?”
And one woman said that both sides in the referendum “should feel a little bit ashamed” of their attempts to scare voters during the campaign.
Mr Cameron responded: “I certainly wasn’t comparing the referendum to Isis or Daesh, I was saying that I think one of the strongest arguments for remaining in the EU is that we are stronger together, we are safer together.
“We do face a dangerous and insecure world. I’ve been your prime minister for the last six years and I sit in those meetings, and I see that we work together to try to face down these threats and I think we will be stronger if we work together.
“Working together against terrorism, working together against (Vladimir) Putin and his aggression in Europe, it must be better to try and stay together to work together, rather than to be separate.”
Asked about Mr Osborne’s warning of an emergency budget within months of a Brexit vote, Mr Cameron said that “nobody wants to have cuts to public spending or putting up taxes”.
But he added: “I’m absolutely convinced that our economy will suffer if we leave . . . We will have less growth, we will have less jobs, we will have less livelihoods for people in our country.
“You don’t gain money by leaving the EU. You make your economy smaller, you have fewer jobs, less tax revenues so therefore you have a big hole in your public finances.
“What the chancellor was saying was if that happens, you have to either allow borrowing to rise – which could threaten our economy – or you have to put up taxes or you have to put up spending. Those are, I think, some pretty fundamental truths.”
– (PA)