Blue on Blue attacks: The latest Vote Leave campaign tactic

This morning at a train repair depot in Ashford George Osborne and Alistair Darling combined for an emergency press conference to promote their joint emergency Brexit Budget.

As the Chancellor tried to wrestle the agenda back on to fears about the economic impact of Brexit, Vote Leave’s Matthew Elliott accused Osborne of having a “teenage temper tantrum” and threatening to vandalise the economy.

A week ago a senior Vote Leave figure told me they’d try to keep the turnout down in the final days of the campaign by doing some “blue on blue” attacks that make the story Tory-dominated and make non-Tory voters switch off. Today a different senior figure in the campaign said he “used to think turnout above 60% would mean we lose but I don’t think so any more.”

Well, the attack was decidedly and exclusively “blue” today so you can make your own mind up what’s going on.

Which is not to say that these Tories aren’t genuinely angry. I bumped into one former Cabinet minister who said he’d like to stuff the Emergency Budget “up a very dark place.”

In an escalation of the Tory backlash over the Remain referendum campaign, Conservative MPs have signed a letter saying they will vote down Osborne’s hypothetical Brexit Budget, which he says would contain £30bn of tax hikes and spending cuts.

The letter had 65 signatures on it when last I checked and that’s a nerve-inducing number, as the authors well know, in a party where 50 MPs (even if David Cameron has won the referendum) can trigger a no confidence vote in the PM.

It also weakens David Cameron’s authority to have these sorts of attacks levelled at him. He was supposed to be the Remain campaign’s mightiest weapon and Remain strategists say he still is just that, But he is undoubtedly diminished by the attacks from his own MPs, especially the very well-known ones he used to sit down for dinner with.

David Cameron and George Osborne show no sign of holding back for fear of alienating their Tory opponents beyond retrieval. This is an existential battle now and the discussions about how to repair the Conservative Party have been parked to be resumed, if required, after June 23rd.