12 October 2015 - Pro-EU Campaign to start in the UK

The cross-party campaign for the UK to stay in the European Union is formally launching with the message that leaving is "not worth the risk".

Former M&S boss Lord Rose, chairman of the campaign, will brand those in favour of exit as "quitters".

He will announce the membership of the board of the new Britain Stronger in Europe group at the launch event.

Two separate campaigns, Vote Leave and Leave.EU, are pushing for an EU exit vote in the referendum.

The poll is due to be held before the end of 2017.

The Britain Stronger in Europe board will include former chief of the general staff Sir Peter Wall, West Ham United vice-chairwoman Baroness Brady and television presenter June Sarpong.

In his speech to the Conservative conference last week, David Cameron promised to “fight hard” in his renegotiation of European Union membership, but he gave only one example of the kind of victory he has in mind. “Britain is not interested in ‘ever-closer union’,” he said. “I will put that right.”

This is a tactical game. The “ever-closer union” formula comes from the Treaty of Rome, the EU’s founding text. Quitters see it as proof that the project has federalising momentum in its DNA; so only exit can save the UK from absorption into a United States of Europe. But it is an open secret in Brussels that some form of exemption from "ever-closer union" – a protocol attached to the treaties – is available in the negotiations. The PM is setting the bar symbolically high and practically low. The rest of the short negotiation wishlist reported on in the Sunday Telegraph was similarly emblematic – such as an “explicit” statement that the euro is not the EU’s official currency, a mere nod at the established reality that sterling is here to stay. Downing Street insists it has not given up on grittier policy questions, but the emphasis on icons nonetheless represents an important realisation that a referendum fought defending the technicalities of a deal will be harder to win than one fought on the broader question of whether Britain is better or worse off inside the club.

That is how the message will be framed when the official “remain” campaign launches on Monday. The strategy is to make the case based on Britain’s security and prosperity – to say that the challenges facing the country are global and that the EU, for all its flaws, provides the most effective forum for shaping our destiny. The chief merit to this argument is that it is true. The outers’ hostility to “Brussels” on the basis that “Brussels” is hostile to the UK is a self-fulfilling prophecy. By refusing to engage, Britain marginalises itself and finds its voice diminished. The natural end to that process is separation and the surrender of influence, with grim consequences in the spheres of trade, policing, security and climate change.