How ministers had to change tack in the EU referendum campaign

George Osborne harnesses the might of the Treasury machine today in the EU referendum campaign, publishing a weighty tome that tweaks 200 pages to warn of the consequences of Britain leaving the EU. He also warns of a ‘profound consequences for our economy, for the living standards of every family, and for Britain’s role in the world’. Those profound consequences include every family being £4,300 a year worse off as a result of Brexit, the Chancellor argues.

John Redwood has already dismissed the document – which hasn’t yet been published – as ‘absurd’. But what it does tell us is that the government has accepted that the security argument alone won’t win the referendum. This has come as a surprise to ministers: James Forsyth revealed that security would be the key theme of the Tory campaign to Remain in a cover piece earlier this year, and at the time the belief amongst those plotting the shape and tone of the campaign was that economic arguments wouldn’t hold as strong a sway because they would become festivals of figures that turned people off.