British PM David Cameron hopes to avoid Conservative Party ‘psychodrama’ as split over Brexit deepens
The June 23 referendum has split the Conservatives down the middle, with members of the party taking to the airwaves to insult one another.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron says he wants to avoid a “psychodrama” within his party over the referendum on European Union membership next month, batting away the suggestion he might hold a televised debate with fellow Conservatives Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London, or Justice Secretary Michael Gove.
“I don’t want too many blue-on-blue conflicts, partly because I want to demonstrate that those arguing to stay in the reformed European Union include the Labour Party, the Green Party, the Liberal Democrat Party, the trade-union movement, most of British industry, the majority of small businesses,” Cameron said Thursday in an interview with LBC radio.
“I want to prove the breadth of the campaign and I don’t want this to become a sort of Tory psychodrama between me and Boris or me and Michael Gove.”
I don’t want this to become a sort of Tory psychodrama between me and Boris or me and Michael Gove
The June 23 referendum has split the Conservatives down the middle, with members of the party taking to the airwaves to insult one another and trading accusations of scaremongering. Johnson was criticised this week for suggesting the EU shares Adolf Hitler’s goal of uniting the continent, and Cameron used Thursday’s interview to add his voice to the condemnation.
“I think he’s wrong,” Cameron said. “Hitler wanted to snuff out democracy across the continent, and the European Union is basically an alliance of countries that share a view about democracy and liberal values.”
Johnson hit back, saying that Cameron hadn’t achieved the reforms of the EU he had sought before calling the referendum and that government efforts to draft a so-called sovereignty law to protect the UK from EU overreach are a “farce”.
“The government has totally failed to protect the UK from EU plans for more centralisation,” Johnson said in a statement e-mailed by the Vote Leave campaign. “We were told to expect reform of the European Court of Justice and of border controls and agriculture and social and employment law and many other things. Alas we achieved none of that.”