Hugo Dixon: Nailing the EU lies - on both sides of the Brexit divide

Britain’s renegotiation of its relationship with the European Union, which comes to a head at a summit on Thursday, will “run right to the wire”, the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, said on Sunday. But even as David Cameron battles with other leaders to nail down things such as the exact terms under which we will be able to deny in-work benefits to migrants, the Prime Minister is turning his attention to the strategic case for our membership of the club.

He made this clear in a speech in Hamburg on Friday, attended by Germany’s Angela Merkel. Cameron’s conclusion was that, in a world where Islamist extremism is a threat, Russia has invaded Ukraine and some countries say they can be economic successes while bypassing democracy, we must stand together with our European allies to promote our values, security and prosperity.

Our values, prosperity and security will, indeed, be three of the big themes that will feature in the coming referendum. There will be a furious debate over whether staying in or leaving the EU best advances these.

The mission of InFacts.org, a journalistic enterprise I have just helped found, is to try to straighten out the facts. My colleagues include former editors of the Guardian, Le Monde, the Observer, Reuters and the Sun. We don’t, of course, think that everybody would have the same view about what was best for Britain if they agreed on the facts. But that would be a start.

InFacts doesn’t pretend to be neutral in this campaign. We are making the fact-based case to stay in. Our main tool is rebuttal. When we come across errors, we pop the perpetrators in our sin bin. Though we concentrate our fire on the Leave camp, we also criticise the Remain side when it strays.

In the few weeks since we soft-launched our website, there has been lots to get our teeth into. Migration has been the top story.

The New Year’s Eve sex attacks in Cologne were a gift for Eurosceptics. Nigel Farage, the Ukip boss, promptly declared that the attackers could get a German passport in three to four years and then come to Britain. We discovered that newly arrived asylum-seekers actually have to wait roughly a decade to get German passports. They also need clean criminal records.

Liam Fox, the Tory Eurosceptic, went one step further, suggesting that terrorist sleeper agents could get naturalised in continental Europe and then come to Britain to carry out an attack. Theoretically, yes. But would a jihadist really wait a decade to wreak havoc in the UK when he or she could do so immediately somewhere on the Continent? If Islamic State is so keen to hit Britain, surely the better option is to recruit home-grown terrorists?

On the other hand, Downing Street’s claim last week that quitting the EU could lead to the Jungle camp shifting from Calais to South-East England seemed exaggerated. Not only is it far from certain that the French would rip up the treaty that allows us to enforce British border controls in Calais; what is actually keeping the migrants out of the UK are the high fences and razor wire, to which we contributed £7 million last summer. Would Paris really tear all that down?

The economy has also been a rich seam for InFacts. We took Daniel Hannan, the Tory MEP, to task for saying that Britain sends £350 million a week to Brussels. The actual figure last year was £250 million.