PM makes strongest attack yet on justice secretary, who likened those warning of post-Brexit recession to scientists paid by Hitler

David Cameron has accused Michael Gove of having “lost it” after the justice secretary compared economists warning against Brexit to experts in the pay of Nazis.

The prime minister made his strongest attack of the campaign so far on Wednesday on Gove, who has long been a close political friend.

Gove had likened those claiming that a vote to leave would lead to a recession to scientists paid by Adolf Hitler’s government to come up with the scientific results wanted by the state.

“We have to be careful about historical comparisons, but Albert Einstein during the 1930s was denounced by the German authorities for being wrong and his theories were denounced and one of the reasons, of course, he was denounced was because he was Jewish,” Gove said. “They got 100 German scientists in the pay of the government to say that he was wrong and Einstein said, ‘Look, if I was wrong, one would have been enough.’”

It is the latest attempt by Gove to dismiss the body of economists warning of the consequences of leaving the EU, after previously saying the British public had had enough of experts getting it wrong.

Cameron has repeatedly tried to pour scorn on this stance, saying people listen to experts when they want their car fixed by a mechanic or they need an engineer to build a bridge.

After Gove’s latest Nazi comments, the prime minister told Sky News: “To hear the leave campaign today sort of comparing independent experts and economists to Nazi sympathisers – I think they have rather lost it.

“These people are independent – economists who have won Nobel prizes, business leaders responsible for creating thousands of jobs, institutions that were set up after the war to try to provide independent advice. It is right to listen.”

His remarks came as Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary, launched a strong attack on leading figures campaigning for Britain to leave the EU, claiming that they want to privatise the NHS, inflict taxes that will hurt the poor and weaken workers’ rights.

The Labour politician has hit out at Conservative figures, including Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and Iain Duncan Smith, as well as Ukip’s Nigel Farage, warning that British politics will shift quickly to the right if they win the referendum.

“Why should anyone believe them when they claim they want to put people in control – their track record tells us that their mission is nothing less than Thatcherism on steroids?” he wrote for the Guardian.

Calling for voters to back the cooperation that is possible in the European Union, Benn accused Gove of being responsible for chaos in schools, and questioned how he could have the “nerve” to blame Europe for a shortage of school places. Duncan Smith was the “architect of the cruel bedroom tax”, and claimed Johnson wanted to “scrap the social chapter and weaken workers’ rights”.

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A source close to Gove said of Benn’s comments: “This is desperate stuff from the remain campaign. We are concentrating on making the positive case for leaving the European Union.”

And Vote Leave argued that a vote for Brexit would put power back into the hands of the British people. Its chief executive, Matthew Elliott, said: “What Britain looks like [after Brexit] is that the people are put back in charge and that we decide decisions about the future of our democracy, our borders and our economy.”

The EU referendum campaign has been marked by a string of second world war comparisons throughout.



Johnson drew criticism for saying the EU’s expansionism was akin to Hitler’s ambitions and Nigel Farage’s “breaking point” poster of a stream of migrants crossing a border in Europe was condemned by the remain camp and Farage accused of deploying Nazi-style propaganda.

Both sides have tried to co-opt wartime prime minister Winston Churchill for their campaigns, with leave claiming he would have wanted Brexit and remain saying he was an architect of the European project and would have wanted to stay.

The Britain Stronger in Europe campaign has also suggested that leading leave campaigners had an agenda that would be bad for British politics. The campaign group, which includes senior Downing Street figures, dug out a report written by Gove in 2000 called the Price of Peace, in which he questioned the efforts to end conflict in Northern Ireland.

In it, Gove questioned how New Labour was using Northern Ireland as a “laboratory for policy developments” that Tony Blair’s party wanted to introduce across Britain. In particular, the justice secretary, who was then a journalist at the Times, criticised equality measures.

“The human rights culture is already spreading in our society, uprooting conventions on which our stability has rested, allowing female soldiers to sue for unfair dismissal when pregnant and prisoners to sue for injuries sustained in escape attempts,” he wrote, also questioning the broadening of rights for transsexuals.

“Will new rights to marry, adopt and enter any job of their choosing be extended? And if so, at what cost to the dignity, stability and durability of our tested notions of married life?”

He also said rights to “eradicate ‘disablism’” would mean institutions such as the police, army or fire service would “no longer be able to discriminate in favour of the able-bodied”.

Gove also criticised moves to prevent discrimination against women in the fire service, saying “this equality” might result in the hiring of firefighters who lack the necessary physical strength. “It is a situation which can only get worse,” he wrote.

Harriet Harman MP, the former deputy leader of the Labour party, said the document offered “proof, in black and white” that Gove wants to sweep away people’s rights.

“A Tory Brexit Britain would be a dark place for women, transsexuals and disabled people, not to mention the millions of working people who would be worse off if we leave the EU’s single market,” she said.

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Jacqui Smith, the former Labour home secretary, said it was worrying because a “more diverse police force is a force that can serve our communities better”.

In their final push of campaigning, with less than 24 hours until the polls open, Vote Leave has embarked on a helicopter tour to persuade voters to back Brexit.

Addressing a crowd in Maldon, Essex, Johnson, the de factor leader of the leave campaign, said: “I do think that we are on the verge, possibly, of an extraordinary event in the history of our country and indeed in the whole of Europe.

“It’s all going to be about getting our supporters out to vote and if we do it I really think tomorrow can be independence day.”

Cameron made a joint appearance in Bristol with Harriet Harman, the Labour former interim leader, and Sir John Major, the Conservative former prime minister.

In a sombre speech, Major accused the leave campaign of being the “gravediggers of our prosperity” and if Britain were to leave the EU, “they must account for what they have done”.