Comment: Pushing Remain cause has exposed empty vitriol of Brexiteers

I’ve always enjoyed canvassing and been reassured by the polite and generally pleasant response of people, even those who were keen to assure me they certainly would not be voting for my party.

Canvassing for Remain has been a very different, and deeply depressing, experience. Attempting to hand out leaflets making the case for a Yes vote, I’ve met with extraordinary hostility, ranging from surliness to tirades of abuse.

John Cleese provided a perfect example of this aggressive attitude when he declared himself an Outer and said Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, should be hanged. If it was meant as a joke, Cleese needs a refresher course in comedy.

Now it may be that those campaigning to leave have met with a similarly unpleasant response from their opponents but I doubt it — most of them lack the vehement determination that drives so many of those who want the UK to go it alone. They suspect that, on balance, staying in is the safer option but they are not great crusaders for EU membership. The Remain campaign has not engendered hugely positive sentiment.

The economic case for remaining in Europe has been resoundingly made. Virtually every respected economic analyst forecasts the alternative creating a downturn in the short and medium term. The markets have already signalled their nervousness about the potential ramifications of a No vote. Banks are openly talking about their plans to move jobs away from London if that happens, and private-equity firms say that many deals are now only being done if they contain contingency clauses allowing cancellation in the event of Brexit.

It is at least debatable how far the Government has needed to feed the Project Fear agenda beyond this, given the risk people might begin to take umbrage at such perceived bullying. When the Chancellor warns that the average mortgage could rise by £1500 a year, sceptical voters are apt to think that this is simply scaremongering guesswork.

Pulling out of a single market of 550 million consumers would be deeply damaging for the UK. For every maverick Lord Bamford or Sir James Dyson, who maintains that their business would continue to thrive, there are many more big British businesses that fear the consequences. Dyson, although it is an exciting company with a big brand name, is not a major employer in the UK, preferring to manufacture in Malaysia.

Brexiteers blithely suggest the EU will be generous in the terms of trade it offers a departing UK. But Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, very publicly begged to differ last week, insisting: “Out is out.” Offering the UK an option that looked attractive to other potential exiters is unlikely to be a strategy the EU would be keen to adopt.

But those who hissed and snarled as I proffered my Remain leaflets did not mention the failings of the single market, of which there are undoubtedly some, nor did they launch into meaningless rhetoric about “reclaiming sovereignty”. They had just one reason why they would be voting out on June 23: immigration.

On Sunday, the Archbishop of Canterbury acknowledged that immigration was a concern for very many people. Since January 2014, it has consistently been top of the concerns highlighted in the Ipsos/Mori issues polls. What the Remain campaign has failed to get across is that this is not simply a British problem but a major issue for many other European countries and it will be best tackled together.