Portrait of the week | 21 April 2016

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George Osborne, the Chancellor, said that if Britain left the European Union, households would be on average £4,300 a year worse off. He quoted a Treasury analysis that said the British economy would be 6 per cent smaller outside the EU by 2030 than it would have been. ‘Remain’ campaigners were treating voters ‘like children who can be frightened into obedience’, Michael Gove, the Justice Secretary, said, and declared that Britain could be part of the European free trade zone but ‘free from EU regulation which costs us billions of pounds a year’. Kenneth Clarke, the former Chancellor, said that David Cameron ‘wouldn’t last 30 seconds if he lost the referendum’. Supporters of the ‘leave’ campaign took a different view. ‘He must stay, I want him to stay,’ said Chris Grayling, the leader of the House of Commons; he was the ‘right man to take us out of the European Union,’ said Theresa Villiers, the Northern Ireland Secretary.