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#LondonVotes2016: A worrying sign for the EU referendum to come

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article-2356945-00E35AEB00000190-836_634x380The London mayoral vote (5 May) will not be about remaining in or leaving the EU, but it may be a useful bellwether for how the debate will turn in the run-up to the EU referendum.

Goldsmith

Zac Goldsmith (British Conservative candidate) enjoys the support of outgoing Mayor Boris Johnson and David Cameron. Like his father billionaire Jimmy Goldsmith (pictured), he favours leaving the EU. Goldsmith senior set up and funded the Referendum Party in 1995; the party was pretty much a one-man band, built on the abundant resources and forceful personality of its founder. On Goldsmith’s death in 1997, the party disappeared from the political scene. Interestingly, Jimmy Goldsmith was also an MEP; elected in 1994, as a Majorité pour l'Autre Europe candidate in France.

Khan

Sadiq Khan’s (Labour candidate) background is rather different from Zac’s. He grew up on a council estate and helped to run the family business. He went to university and qualified as a lawyer, where he worked on employment, discrimination and other human-rights issues. His background means that he is probably better placed to know about the benefits of EU employment laws and the EU’s support for fundamental rights.

Khan, like the vast majority of those in the Labour Party, supports the Remain campaign. Writing in the London Evening Standard, Khan said the Brexit campaign was putting at risk the rights of around a million EU citizens in London to live and work there. If Britain left the EU, they could end up “having to leave London”, he said. The Europeans in London could become a significant factor in the election, as they make up around 10% of the London's electorate.

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The EU referendum will deny the vote to the many citizens from other European countries living in the UK. The Irish, Maltese and Cypriots will be allowed to vote in the EU referendum; Ireland because of its historical links and special arrangements with the UK, and Malta and Cyprus because they are members of the Commonwealth. The mayoral vote offers an opportunity to those Europeans who won’t be allowed to vote in the EU referendum.

Fearmongering

In ever-increasing desperation to raise his popularity, Goldsmith has tried to link Khan with Islamic extremism. In an article that appeared with a photo of a bombed-out bus from the 7/7 attacks in London, Goldsmith suggested that a vote for Khan would be a vote for terrorism.

Having accused the Remain campaign of fearmongering, it appears that the Leave campaign are the ones who want to fight dirty. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove (a prominent ‘Leave’ minister) have criticized President Barack Obama’s intervention in the debate and suggested that his attitude to Britain might be based on his “part-Kenyan” heritage and an “ancestral dislike of the British empire”.

The Leave campaign is failing to win the arguments. Like the Goldsmith campaign, the Brexiteers are becoming increasingly desperate and are on the back heel. With the 'Remainers' clearly winning the debate on the economic benefits of EU membership, the Brexiteers will turn to their strongest hand, the issue on which they are ahead of the Remain camp – migration. A cornered Leave campaign is about to get nasty, very nasty. The scars that this will leave on those who have come to live and work in Britain will be deep.

Brace yourselves for more to come.

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EU Reporter publishes articles from a variety of outside sources which express a wide range of viewpoints. The positions taken in these articles are not necessarily those of EU Reporter.

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