A Tory peer who is a close ally of David Cameron has backed the campaign to take Britain out of the EU as the Conservative row over Europe intensified.
Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise, the Next boss who is also close to George Osborne, said that the EU had added to the costs faced by businesses.
Writing in The Times today, the Tory donor says: “Over the next four months, people will debate the economic pros and cons of Brexit. On balance, I think we will be better off out.”
The decision by Lord Wolfson, whose wife, Eleanor Shawcross, is one of the chancellor’s advisers, will be a blow to Downing Street. He funded Mr Cameron’s leadership campaign and was one of the first to be handed a peerage by the prime minister in June 2010.
It came as senior Tories suggested that Mr Cameron would not be able to stay in his post if Britain backed Brexit. There has been huge anger among Eurosceptics over what they see as the “project fear” strategy to scare voters into backing EU membership.
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Lord Tebbit, the former Conservative chairman, said it would be “very difficult” for the prime minister to oversee negotiations about leaving the EU should voters opt to exit the bloc in June. He attacked Mr Cameron and others for “silliness” for warning that leaving would be a leap in the dark.
“I think he would find it extraordinarily difficult to suddenly change sides again,” Lord Tebbit told BBC Radio 4’s World At One. “Now to say ‘[staying in the EU] is what I wanted but the country doesn’t want it, so now I’m going to go over to the side of my country’ . . . I think that would be an extremely difficult thing for him to do.”
Liam Fox, the former defence secretary, said it would be possible for the prime minister to stay in his post in theory but warned that relations could sour if the campaign descended further into acrimony.
“No one can look at the Conservative party in the last 20 years and say that it hasn’t had a fundamental difference of view on Europe, and we have known in the past how passionate that can become,” he told the BBC. “I think that’s a good thing. But we just need to not allow that passion in the debate over Britain’s future to spill into our personal relations.”
Dr Fox said pressure to leave the EU was “something of a peasants’ revolt” growing from the UK’s grassroots.
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Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, has accused the In camp of using “spin, smears and threats” that could poison the atmosphere among Conservatives after the referendum.
Boris Johnson also laid into the new EU deal secured by Mr Cameron, saying it represented “no real change”. The mayor of London said voting to stay in would see Britain become “the frog in the boiling saucepan of water”.
He told the Evening Standard: “We will never be able credibly to argue for any reform in Europe again . . . We will be signed up to this thing lock, stock and barrel — hook, line and sinker.”
Mr Johnson has compared himself to James Bond in his quest to take on the EU. However, in an interview with The Times, his brother Jo, the science minister, said: “The European Union cannot be characterised as Spectre, that does it a real disservice. It’s a body which is trying to manage the operation of this hugely valuable single market. It’s important we don’t get carried away by the fanciful analogies and focus on the substance of the arguments.”
