EU referendum live: Tories 'may push for second referendum if leave lose'

Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow immigration minister, has told the House magazine in an interview that he is worried that the Leave campaign is turning politics into a “truth-free zone”. He explained:

There’s a development in politics that we have to be really careful of, which is allowing politics to become a sort of truth-free zone – this sense that it doesn’t really matter if you’re telling the truth, that it doesn’t really matter if you say one thing one day and another thing the next day. Some of this is happening I’m afraid in the camp that want to leave the EU.

There’s a very loose relationship with the truth. We must be really careful. Let’s have a hard debate. But we mustn’t allow that to enter our politics. It really matters actually whether people are being honest about the facts when they present their arguments. It really matters. And if we get casual about that we’ll lose something in politics forever.

George Osborne also indicated that he would not accept Dominic Raab’s argument that a narrow Remain win could lead to the Tories returning to this issue within the next few years. (See 3.56pm.) The June vote would settle the matter for a generation, Osborne said. Asked about the prospect of a re-run, he said:

I think it will settle it actually. Everyone understands this is the big decision. It’s important for people to recognise there isn’t going to be some second EU referendum. If we vote to leave, we’re leaving. [If] we vote to say, we’ve made our decision we want a strong economy, we want a strong UK and we want Britain out there in the world, shaping events and not being shaped by them. And I think that will last for at least a generation.

George Osborne has attacked Nigel Farage for using “pretty disgusting” rhetoric about the threat of migrants sexually attacking women and refugee bodies washing up on British beaches.

In a marked escalation of attacks on the Ukip leader and by extension the entire leave campaign, the chancellor singled out Farage for representing a “mean-spirited, narrow and divisive” vision of Britain. He said that “tendency” was now coming to dominate the anti-EU campaign.

Speaking to reporters on a campaign visit to a Scottish sheep and beef farm with Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson, Osborne said:

The Nigel Farage tendency is taking over their argument and you’re increasingly getting this Farage vision of Britain, with all this talk of bodies washing up the sea shores and women being at risk of sexual assault from migrants.

It is pretty disgusting. And we want to say no to it. We want to say that is not the country we are. We’re a country that is big and bold and strong, and united, and we want to say no to this mean-spirited, divisive, negative view of Britain that you get from Nigel Farage and company.

Conservative MPs may push for a second referendum on EU membership with a few years if Remain win, Dominic Raab, the justice minister, has said.

Raab, who is a senior figure in Vote Leave, made the revelation in an interview with the House magazine. He said that he would expect MPs to respect the verdict of the people but also that it was inevitable that the prospect of a second referendum would be an issue in the next leadership contest, which he said he hoped would be near the 2020 general election.

This was particularly the case if Leave lost narrowly, he said.

His comment implies candidates in the next leadership contest may be under pressure to offer a second referendum after the 2020 election.

Raab told the magazine:

You would be naïve to suggest that [a second referendum] wouldn’t become a factor and one element in that [the next leadership contest.]

I think the sensible thing, if it’s very close – within a couple of points – would be to take pause, respect the verdict of the British people and effectively shelve this debate until that point, which I hope is going to be as close to the 2020 election as possible.

I think that’s the pragmatic, sensible approach. Then we can all get on with delivering the business of government ...

I think the public would expect us to accept their verdict, but of course things change. I’m just realistic and I’d like people to acknowledge that whenever the Tory leadership election is, I think it’s obvious that it will be part of that.

Here are the key quotes and news lines from Sir John Major and Tony Blair’s joint appearance in Northern Ireland earlier.

Sir John Major

• Major said the unity of the UK was on the ballot paper because a vote for Brexit would probably lead to Scottish independence.

I say, without a shadow of doubt in my mind, that the wrong outcome on June the 23rd will affect our union, and will jeopardise that unity. Because the plain uncomfortable truth is that the unity of the United Kingdom itself is on the ballot paper in two weeks’ time ...

If Scotland votes in the referendum to stay in the European Union but the UK as a whole chooses to leave, there is a serious risk of a new referendum. Not straight away, perhaps, but ultimately, nationalist pressure for another shot at leaving the UK in Scotland could prove to be uncontrollable and politically irresistible.

And, in those circumstances, if the UK was outside the European Union, I can well envisage a different result in that referendum.

• He said Brexit would have a “wholly negative effect” on the relationship between the UK and the Republic of Ireland.

And though I have no doubt, whatever happens, that those relations between the UK and Ireland will remain cordial, I do worry about the prospect of a British exit. Which would leave Ireland on the other side of the table in a new negotiation between Britain and 27 other European Union nations.

If that happens, it would have a wholly negative effect on the relationship between our two countries.

• He said that the EU was not just for the elite, but for ordinary people and for the young too. This is what he said when asked what it had to offer the working class.

I’m working class. I come from Brixton. I lived there at a time of mass immigration. My family lived in two rooms in a multi-occupied and, from time to time, multi-racial house. So I’m not part of any elite. And of course there are people across Europe who are elite. But there are millions, 500m people, who are in the EU who are strong supporters of it. This is part of the nonsense that people are being fed, that Europe is only for the elite ...

Europe is not for the elite; it’s for you. It’s for your generation. Tony and I aren’t going to be here in due course. But you are. It is your future that we are voting on on 23. Don’t go back to what our past was. Look ahead to your future and vote to stay in.

• He said investment into the UK would be “much smaller” if it left the EU.

From around the world as a whole it is overwhelmingly likely - you can’t put a figure on it, you can’t say how quickly it will happen - that there will be a much smaller investment in every part of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland. And that investment isn’t abstract. It’s jobs.

• He said his experience being brought up poor meant that he knew that prosperity, which he said was linked to EU membership, was not just an abstract matter.

People tend to regard prosperity as something that one ought not really to talk about. But if you have ever lived in a position where you could not pay the bills at the end of the week, you understand that prosperity actually matters. Prosperity isn’t just a question of not being able to pay the bills. It’s a security of mind. And if you have ever been in a position where you cannot do that, I promise you, it never, ever leaves you.

Tony Blair

• Blair said leaving the EU would make it impossible to maintain the common travel area between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

If we, as the UK, vote to leave, we’re then in a new, unique situation. The Republic of Ireland remains in the European Union. The UK leaves the European Union. So then what happens to the common travel area?

Now the Leave people say it would just stay, but when you go into the detail, you realise how difficult that is if not impossible because of course, if the UK were to leave the European Union, the border with the Republic becomes the border of the European Union.

So what that would mean by the way, because of course, there were still be the free movement of people within the European Union including the Republic of Ireland with the rest of Europe, if you then retain the common travel area, it means someone from any part of Europe can come to the south and then come to the North and there are no obviously border checks within the UK. So you couldn’t possibly have such a policy because if you did have such a policy it would make a nonsense of their entire argument for leaving which is all to do with the free movement of people within the European Union.

So what you would actually have to do is end up either having border controls and custom checks on the border between North and South, the Republic of Ireland and the UK, and think of those hundreds of miles of border, think of the constant interchange of people, think of the commerce, the goods and services which are freely traded across that line, the problems of doing that are absolutely immense but the only alternative would then be to have, between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK which would plainly be unacceptable as well.

He said the inability of Leave campaigners to have answers to questions like this was “unforgivably irresponsible”.

• He accused Leave campaigners of being ideologues.

The Leave campaign has consistently ignored the impact of Leave on the UK. They ignore in particular the impact economically, socially, politically on Northern Ireland, and that is because their ideological fixation with leaving Europe is more important to them than the clear disadvantage Northern Ireland would suffer if we left and the consequent damage to the UK as a whole.

We should always distrust those who put ideology before such practical considerations because those who pay the price of the ideology are not those who are advocating it.

• He said leaving the EU would go “against the grain” of the future because the future was about countries coming together.

Around the world people are coming together. Wherever you go, whether it’s the Far East or central Asia or South America, people are trying to come together. And for us now to break apart from a set of relationships that have grown up over four decades, where we literally are in a situation where half of what we trade, we trade with the rest of Europe, where we have these fundamental relationships, not just for our economy but for our strategic position in the world, to break this apart is not just, for all the reasons we’ve given, wrong for us. It goes against the grain of the future. The future is not about countries breaking apart their alliances. The future is about countries coming together.

• He said leaving the EU would be “about the worst thing” Britain could do to prepare itself for the future.

The case for staying, for remaining, is not a case about just how we manage today’s world. It is about how we manage tomorrow’s world as well, how our future is governed, and how opportunity comes to us as people in that future. It is an uncertain and insecure future. But leaving the European Union is about the worst thing we could do to prepare ourselves for that future properly. That’s why, in my view, we really should remain.

Downing Street has said that Leave.EU has no hope of challenging the decision to extend the voter registration deadline in the courts. (See 10.16am.) It also dismissed claims this was a way of helping Remain voters to register.

The prime minister’s spokeswoman said:

The government position is clear - that this is a legally watertight approach. This isn’t about how people may vote in the referendum. There is no way of knowing at registration how people intend to vote. This is about the government providing a service to enable people to exercise their democratic right. We had problems with that service we want to rectify and address it.

This is an important choice facing people and if they haven’t registered to vote, then we are making sure we deal with the service so that those who want to can.

In his interview with Andrew Neil last night, George Osborne, the chancellor, insisted that Turkey would not be joining the EU.

But Leave.EU points out that the British embassy in Ankara says on its website that it has a team working on “a wide range of issues including Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, the economy, energy policy and international security”.

Arron Banks, the Leave.EU co-founder, said:

Turkish accession poses huge risks to our finances, our public services and our national security. Cameron and Osborne still want it, but they know the public don’t and think they can get away with pretending it isn’t going to happen, even with government websites boasting that they have teams dedicated to speeding it the process.

Grant Shapps, the Conservative former party co-chairman, has announced that he has decided to vote Remain. He explains why in a post on his website. Here’s an extract.

Having agonised about my own decision long and hard, I have finally reached the conclusion that in the end the potential turmoil for business is really quite difficult to ignore. I think that the uncertainty about market assess for British companies and the potential that has to put jobs as risk, does just tip the balance in favour of remaining. I will therefore personally vote to remain.

These arguments are very finely balanced, no one truly knows the impact that the referendum’s outcome will have. Speaking as a former Conservative party chairman, I take this opportunity to ask the party to recognise that whilst colleagues have widely differing views on this EU referendum, in the end we are all working to try to build a stronger country for everyone. This debate with all its necessary divisions, should therefore be kept in context because, whatever the outcome, we will need to continue to work closely together afterwards for the good of the nation.

Tony Blair said that leaving the EU would make it impossible to keep the common travel area between Ireland and Northern Ireland. (See 11.53am.)

In a statement from Vote Leave, Theresa Villiers, the Northern Ireland secretary, said she did not accept this.

Northern Ireland, like the rest of the UK, will flourish outside the EU. We can keep an open land border. The common travel area between the UK and Ireland has existed for nearly 100 years since the creation of the Irish state in the 1920s. It will continue if we vote to leave. There would be risks to manage but they are not significantly more serious than risks that are already managed effectively today through bilateral cooperation between the UK and Ireland.

The idea that thousands of non-Irish EU citizens would suddenly start crossing the border is far-fetched. If we vote leave and change the rules on free movement for non-Irish EU citizens, then if they come to the UK across our land border without legal clearance to do so, they would not be able to work, or claim benefits, or rent a home, or open a bank account and could ultimately be deported. There are plenty of mechanisms we can use to control immigration and deal with risks around illegal migration which do not involve physical checks at our land border. The reality is that there has never been a genuinely ‘hard border’ enforced between the UK and Ireland and there would not be one if we leave.

Major and Blair for Remain - Snap verdict: Of all the Remain media events we’ve seen, that was probably one of the most effective. Sir John Major and Tony Blair may seem like figures from the distant past, but in 1997 around three quarters of the British electorate voted for parties led by either one or other of them. People generally like seeing political opponents come together and this was a more genuine cross-party excursion than David Cameron’s stunt with Harriet Harman, Tim Farron and Natalie Bennett because Major and Blair were genuinely complimentary about each other and communicated their message together. At the event on Monday Cameron hogged all the questions and, when it was over, could not get away fast enough from Harman et al. Major and Blair also adopted a relatively understated tone. They made strong points about the future of the UK, Britain’s relations with the Republic of Ireland post-Brexit, the Irish common travel area and about the economic impact of Brexit on the UK generally, but they did so with an air of enlightened, but slightly detached concern which made a pleasant change from some of the more shrill scaremongering we’ve heard. Perhaps Major and Blair are so tarnished by the ERM and Iraq respectively that no one takes any notice (although seeing Blair in Northern Ireland is a reminder that the “warmonger” narrative omits a big part of the story of his premiership), but it is likely that they still have some persuasive clout.

Major and Blair are now taking questions.

Blair starts by saying he was a bit worried when the moderator said they would be facing their toughest audience. “That would be quite a high bar in my case,” he says.

Q: What reasons are there for working class people to stay in the EU?

Major says he is working class. He comes from Brixton. He was brought up in a two-bedroom house. It was a mixed community. He is not elite. People say Europe is just for elites, but that is “nonsense”. When the UK joined the EU, it was described as the sick man of Europe. Since then it has got much richer. It is projected to become the richest country in Europe.

He says when he was young, for a holiday people went to Brighton. Now young people can go around Europe without visas.

He says he objects strongly to the Leave campaign saying the EU is just for elites.

• Major says the EU is not just for elites.

He says he and Blair are not going to be here in future. This is about young people. “Don’t go back to what our past was,” he says.

Blair says people in the Leave camp are not interested in discussing the problems that might occur if the UK leaves the EU.

The common travel area between the Republic and Northern Ireland is a good example.

It started in the 1920s.

The UK and the Republic joined the EU at the same time. So the common travel area could continue.

If the UK leaves, what happens to it, he asks.

He says Leave say it will just stay.

But that would be difficult, or impossible.

• Blair says if UK leaves EU, it would be impossible to keep common travel area with Ireland.

He says it would be impossible to keep it because otherwise EU citizens could just to Ireland and cross into the UK.

You would have to have border checks, he says.

The problems of that would be “immense”.

But the only alternative would be border checks between Northern Ireland and the mainland, which would be unacceptable.

He says Brexit would put the union at risk. And it would put Northern Ireland at risk.

• Blair says ignoring these concerns is “unforgivably irresponsible.”

Major turns to Northern Ireland.

He says he and Blair know how carefully the peace process was put together.

He says both men know about the stops and starts, and the compromises, involved in building a peace that will endure.

He says no problem took up more of his time as prime minister.

However routine the troubles were, he was convinced that it would be possible to bring peace to Northern Ireland, he says.

People were sick of the violence, he says.

He says it is extraordinary to come to Northern Ireland and see a successful power-sharing agreement. Thirty years ago, that would have seemed impossible.

He says Brexit would put this at risk. It would “put all the pieces of the constitutional jigsaw up in the air again, and no one could be certain where they would land”.

He says he accepts that relations between the UK and Ireland will prove cordial, whatever happens.

But if the UK leaves the EU, Ireland would be on the other side of the table. That would have a “wholly negative effect” on relations with Ireland.

• Major says Brexit would have “wholly negative effect” on UK relations with Ireland.

Major says it is not a coincidence that every living former prime minister, as well as the current one, thinks the UK should stay in the EU.

They have all seen how EU membership increases British influence, he says.

He says people should fight for the UK’s interests in Europe. That is the right choice for our country, he says.

Sir John Major goes first.

He says staying in the EU is good for Britain. But today he wants to focus on one argument in particular, he says.

He says the UK is a union of four countries.

He says without a shadow of doubt that the wrong outcome will put the union in doubt.

The unity of the UK is on the ballot paper, he says.

• Major says “the unity of the UK” is on the ballot paper on 23 June.

Sir John Major and Tony Blair at doing a joint Q&A with students in Northern Ireland now.

There is a live feed at the top of this blog.

At the Labour event in the Shard this morning Yvette Cooper, Labour’s former shadow home secretary, said Leave campaign had showed Boris Johnson was not fit to be prime minister, directly accusing the ex-mayor of lying in order to advance his own career.

Johnson, cited by polls as one of the most trusted figures by the public on the EU, would lose his reputation eventually, Cooper said.

Watch what happens over time to Boris Johnson’s reputation, the way he ignores the truth, and think he can have any kind of authority.

How could you have someone like that as a prime minister? Someone who is happy to rip up the facts and talk up complete fiction for his own personal interests. In the end, people will see through that.

She said Johnson and justice secretary Michael Gove were “deliberately telling lies” about Turkey’s accession to the EU, saying they were well aware such a scenario was a long way from reality.

They know this, they are not stupid, but they are deliberately misleading and manipulating the facts, deliberately telling lies.

I don’t know how they live with themselves, manipulating and telling lies in this way, they know what they are doing. I don’t know what their conscience is saying to them but they should really think hard about the way they are twisting and distorting this.

Cooper said she believed Johnson and Gove, both former journalists, believed they could “talk in politics as the same way as they used to as columnists, just to be provocative.”

Earlier Claire mentioned the fact that Bill Clinton, the former US president, has urged Britain to stay in the EU. His short New Statesman article where he makes this declaration is now available here, on the magazine’s website.

Here’s an excerpt.

In a tumultuous world, marked by slow growth, excessive inequality, massive refugee flows, and sectarian violence, it’s tempting to believe we can reduce our exposure and increase our personal and economic security by turning inward and keeping the world’s problems out. We’d all like to have the benefits of global interdependence without the burdens. However, because there are disruptive forces we cannot escape, co-operation and collective action are much more likely than withdrawal and isolation to produce prosperity and security. For a nation as large, diverse, and successful as the UK, there is no escape from the growing pains and contradictions of the 21st century world.

It is also important not to minimise the benefits of EU membership to the UK. For example, I was honoured to support the peace process in Northern Ireland. It has benefited from the UK’s membership in the European Union, and I worry that the future prosperity and peace of Northern Ireland could be jeopardised if Britain withdraws.

Arron Banks, the co-founder of Leave.EU, put out a statement this morning saying he was thinking of taking legal action to try to stop the government extending the deadline for voter registration. He suggested this could involve challenging the result of the referendum after 23 June. He said:

For the government to alter election law during an election period is absolutely unprecedented and unconstitutional. This isn’t some democratic initiative, it’s a desperate attempt by the establishment to register as many likely Remain voters as possible before polling day. Terrific efforts have been made to target young people, thought to be more sympathetic to the EU, while older voters who backed Remain in 1975 but have grown heartily sick of the bloc after forty years of broken promises were given a body swerve.

This follows hot on the heels of the Electoral Commission issuing thousands of ballots to EU nationals with no right to vote in the referendum, turning a blind eye the councils issuing postal voting guidance suggesting that voters put their cross in the box for Remain and doing nothing about Cameron spending over £9m on propaganda leaflets, in blatant violation of its own guidelines and of the Council of Europe’s code of good practice on referendums, too. There are now serious questions hanging over this organisation, which had already lost much public confidence following allegations of corruption during elections in Oldham and Tower Hamlets.

Taken together, we believe that the above constitutes a clear attempt to rig the referendum or, at a bare minimum, to load the dice. We believe It is unconstitutional at best and have been advised that with legitimate cause we could challenge this extension. We are therefore considering all available legal options with our legal team, with a view to potentially launching a judicial review now and after the outcome of the referendum on 23rd June.

Readers with good memories will remember that Banks also threatened to go to court to challenge the Electoral Commission’s decision to make Vote Leave the lead out campaign, not Grassroots Out, which includes Leave.EU. That came to nothing after Banks had second thoughts and dropped the idea.

Carl Garnder, the legal blogger and former government lawyer, has tweeted at length about this. He says Banks’s legal case is “hopeless”.

Sadiq Khan, the new Labour mayor of London, has been speaking at a Labour event in the Shard this morning, with Alan Johnson, chair of Labour In for Britain, Harriet Harman, the former deputy leader, and Yvette Cooper, the former shadow home secretary.

Khan said it was up to Labour to win the EU referendum for Remain.

Every day we see another example of why David Cameron and the Tories simply cannot win this referendum as they lose credibility with the public. They are simply too riven by division. It now falls to us, and it’s time for us to step up.

Jeremy, Harriet, Alan, Yvette, the whole shadow cabinet, and every Labour MP, Councillor, member and supporter in Britain - the responsibility is ours. We don’t want to look back in two weeks’ time and think - did we do enough?

And Johnson said the Tories were making the contest look like “a bunfight in the Eton tea room”.

With David Cameron and Boris Johnson trading blows in this campaign it sometimes resembles a bunfight in the Eton tea room. This debate is not about who is to lead the Conservative Party, it’s about the kind of country we want Britain to be: engaged with our continent or isolated on the periphery; erecting barriers or building bridges; a great trading nation or a small minded country where exploitation flourishes.

As the largest political party in the country we’re asking our members to do even more in the final two weeks of the campaign in persuading Labour voters to protect jobs, our economy and workers’ rights by staying in the EU, the largest commercial market in the world.

The truth is Labour are the only major political party who are united on this issue, so we need everyone - MPs, councillors, members and supporters - to redouble their efforts to defeat Nigel Farage, Michael Gove, Iain Duncan Smith and their friends by convincing a million more people to vote Remain.

This is from my colleague Jessica Elgot.

Here is Sarah Wollaston’s article in the Times (paywall) explaining why she has changed her mind on Brexit and now decided that she is in favour of staying in the EU.

In the article Wollaston, a Tory MP, chair of the Commons health committee and a former GP, says that Vote Leave’s claim that leaving the EU would save £350m a week which could go to the NHS is not true, that Brexit would damage the NHS because it would damage the economy and that the Leave campaign, by focusing on immigration, “looks increasingly indistinguishable from Ukip”.

She also suggests she has been influenced by conversations with her father.

In recent weeks I have also observed the professionalism and care of the NHS from my father’s bedside as he recovered from a heart attack and a triple bypass. We had time for long conversations about the referendum and our place in Europe. Now 81, as a teenager he was trained as a mine clearance diver with the Royal Navy. For him, the risk of war in Europe is not some abstract debate but a horror against which the EU, for all its imperfections, has brought us protection.

In an interview on the Today programme a few minutes ago she said that some Vote Leave campaigners admit in private that their claim about EU membership costing £350m a week is not true. She accused them of practising “post-truth politics”.

I think right from the outset there are people within the Leave campaign who acknowledge in private that they know this is not true, but what they are trying to encourage is a discussion about the amount. Well, this is a kind of post-truth politics. Having come into public life complaining about open and honest data, I can’t step foot on a battlebus or distribute a leaflet with information that I know to be untrue. And I’ve told them that.

Good morning and welcome to the daily EU referendum live blog. I’ve scooped up all you need to know for the day ahead; Andrew Sparrow will be along later to take his seat. Do come and chat in the comments below or find me on Twitter @Claire_Phipps.

The big picture

A boost for Bremain (sorry, I fell for the alliteration) this morning, with news that Tory MP Dr Sarah Wollaston, previously a Brexit backer, has now said she will vote for Britain to stay in the EU. The push that became a shove was, the former GP says, the claim by Vote Leave that quitting would free up £350m a week for the NHS – something she says “simply isn’t true”:

For someone like me who has long campaigned for open and honest data in public life I could not have set foot on a battle bus that has at the heart of its campaign a figure that I know to be untrue.

If you’re in a position where you can’t hand out a Vote Leave leaflet, you can’t be campaigning for that organisation.

In an article for the Times (I cannot find it on the website but see it here), Wollaston adds:

The Leave campaign has redrawn its battle lines around immigration for the final weeks of the campaign and looks increasingly indistinguishable from Ukip.

Does the defection of one MP matter much? David Cameron is certainly pleased. Responses from the leave side range from critical to dismissive to conspiracy theorist. Perhaps, though, it suggests – as the c12% of undecided voters might confirm – there are people who have been waiting to hear the arguments before they settle in a camp. The very idea!

Don’t expect any floor-crossing this evening as ITV hosts a referendum debate that is actually a debate featuring, for remain, Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon, Tory energy secretary Amber Rudd and Labour’s shadow business secretary Angela Eagle; and for leave, Conservatives Boris Johnson and energy minister Andrea Leadsom, and Labour’s Gisela Stuart. ITV’s Julie Etchingham moderates again.

Expect: questions on a second Scottish referendum; disputes over that £350m figure; Tory leadership speculation; some sort of joke from Johnson about being the only man on the stage as if that isn’t (reversed) absolutely the normal state of affairs for every single woman in politics.

And after the debate, please don’t all rush at once to register to vote before the all-new midnight Thursday deadline. MPs will vote earlier in the day to allow the 48-hour extension to the registration deadline, following the crashing of the official website as the original cut-off point approached on Tuesday night.

Pro-Brexit Tory MP Bernard Jenkin and Leave.EU funder Arron Banks have both warned that that if the result of the referendum were to be close, the decision to extend the deadline could be challenged by a judicial review. But the Electoral Commission said it supported the extension.

You should also know:

• Tony Blair and John Major will campaign together today in Northern Ireland.
• George Osborne says voting for Brexit means embracing Nigel Farage’s divisive vision.
• Uncertainty over the EU referendum has driven the biggest fall in the number of people trying to buy a property since the financial crisis.
• Citigroup warns staff of Brexit jobs risk, while Brexit supporter Lord Bamford, chairman of JCB, writes to his 6,000 employees to say there is “very little to fear” from leaving the EU.
• Oxford University’s Migration Observatory says the introduction of an Australian-style points-based immigration system will not guarantee that net migration will be reduced to the tens of thousands.

Poll position

No fresh polls today. Enjoy the silence.

Diary

• At 8.15am, Labour’s Andy Burnham gives a speech in Manchester warning that the referendum should not be seen as a single issue protest vote.
• At 9am London mayor Sadiq Khan, Alan Johnson, Yvette Cooper and Harriet Harman roll up for a Labour In event at the Shard.
• Former prime ministers Tony Blair and John Major head to Northern Ireland; chancellor George Osborne is in Scotland.
• From 8pm to 10pm, it’s the ITV referendum debate: Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon are the headliners.
  

• At 8.30pm, the Oxford Union hosts a referendum debate with Michael Howard, Michael Heseltine, Gisela Stuart, Alex Salmond and Yvette Cooper (again).
• At 10.30pm Question Time on BBC1 has Eddie Izzard, Nigel Farage, Hilary Benn, Chris Grayling and Allison Pearson on the panel.
  
• And at midnight – have I mentioned this? – voting registration CLOSES.

Read these

Nicholas Vinocur and Tara Palmeri in Politico say France will not play nicely in the event that Britain votes to leave the EU:

The French push is focused on convincing the remaining EU countries to unwind all treaties and agreements binding the UK to the bloc quickly, so the divorce is sealed by withdrawing subsidies, re-evaluating trade relationships sector by sector, denying British supervisory bodies EU recognition in areas like financial services, and establishing new immigration rules, to name just a few levers …

France would not be acting out of spite, officials said, and has no interest in setting off a tit-for-tat war of punitive measures. But as a core EU member, sources said it had a responsibility to strengthen the bloc and deprive anti-EU parties – not just the FN but also the likes of Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom in the Netherlands – of a chance to use Britain as a shining example of what life can be after the European Union.

The Spectator pits Matthew Parris and Daniel Hannan against each other to give their best reasons to vote In or Out (I’m going to let readers assume which of them argues which case). A taster:

Europe has become a proxy for people’s sense of powerlessness.

Ask yourself, though, who the ‘we’ are who would be ‘taking back control’. The ‘we’ used by Brexiteers is menacingly unspecific. Some of the ‘we’ want much less regulation, some want much more, some want different. The collective ‘we’ can only survive the first few yards of this journey – from now until 24 June. After any decision to leave, that sense of purpose would fragment.

‘Europe’ has soaked up for us a million gripes about the modern world: a proxy and convenient target for a national irritability which, were Europe to be removed, would not go away.

Baffling claim of the day

The Telegraph leads today with the news that “Thatcher minister quits Tories in Brexit row”. The minister is Sir John Nott, the row is that he says he won’t renew his party membership until Cameron is replaced as leader, and the baffling bit is that the article says Nott “is understood to have voted for Ukip in European elections” in 2014 anyway.

Celebrity endorsement of the day

Former US president and potential First Dude-in-waiting Bill Clinton, writing in the New Statesman (again, apparently not online yet; the morning briefing is just too darned ahead of itself), cites the “future properity and peace” of Northern Ireland as a reason to vote remain:

Britain is a leading representative of Europe throughout the world … I hope you will stay.

The archbishop of York, John Sentamu, has come to the same conclusion, writing in the Telegraph today:

Not all decisions should be made purely on the basis of ‘What’s in it for us?’ It is also significant, therefore, that a far higher percentage of young people wish to stay in the EU than older people; it is they, principally, who will have to live with the consequences of the decision that we take on June 23.

The day in a tweet

If today were a book ...

It would be Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Or Tom’s Midnight Garden. Or Midnight Express. Anything with midnight in it, basically. MIDNIGHT. Got that?

And another thing

Would you like to wake up to this briefing in your inbox every weekday? Sign up here!