The Vote Leave campaign could be formidable – but it has an Achilles heel

As David Cameron prepares to make his case to European leaders over dinner this evening, the Out campaign is stepping up its preparations for the referendum.

Vote Leave will host 10 regional launches in the New Year and appoint campaign directors for each region. It’ll also hire staff to work at a constituency level. Combine this with a central campaign team that contains former senior aides to Theresa May, Michael Gove and Philip Hammond and you have the basis for a formidable operation. With the backing of senior business figures such as Crispin Odey and Luke Johnson, they also shouldn’t have any trouble raising money.

But the campaign itself is not as confident of the final result as some of the MPs backing it. They are sceptical of those polls that indicate that the campaign is currently neck and neck. Senior figures in the campaign believe that they are still well behind.