“Have we withdrawn from the free movement of people or is that sheet simply untrue?” Rees-Mogg asked with a degree of outrage that no-one could doubt was genuine.

The same could not be said of the Prime Minister’s disingenuous and deliberately misleading response. Caught bang to rights, he did what he frequently does and hoped that an appropriate level of contrived indignation would let him off the hook. “The truth is this, economic migrants that come to the European Union do not have the right to come to the UK. They are not European nationals.”

Well (as the young people say these days) duh!

Once again, Cameron was stating a fact and hoping no-one would notice it was nothing to do with the question. Of course economic migrants who arrive in the EU and who haven’t yet achieved citizenship there don’t yet have the right to come to live and/or work in the UK. That, as the Prime Minister well knew, was not the point being made by his recalcitrant back bencher. The point was that the government and its propaganda leaflet are making great effort to avoid stating the truth: that every and any current citizen of every other EU state has that right. Stating that they are “checked” as they arrive is no more significant than stating that they are “counted”.