Nicola Sturgeon: Vote Leave claim an "absolute con"

Divisions within the Conservative party dominated the first televised EU debate, with Amber Rudd launching a series of personal attacks on Boris Johnson.

Meanwhile Nicola Sturgeon described Vote Leave's claims exiting the EU would return £10bn per year from Brussels as an “absolute con”.

Johnson was accused by Rudd of “misleading the public”, putting his personal ambitions over the interests of the country, and not being trustworthy.

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Rudd went after Johnson immediately, dismissing the Leave campaigner’s claims that immigration could be controlled if the UK left the European Union.

The Energy Secretary said: “You need to look at the numbers – although I fear that the only number that Boris is interested in is the one that says ‘Number 10’.”

Rudd later called out the MP for “misleading the public” when he suggested the UK could have to contribute to a future bailout of another eurozone nation, and she also used part of her closing statement to call into question his reliability.

“Boris, well, he’s the life and soul of the party but he’s not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening.”

Johnson generally chose to avoid engaging the ‘blue-on-blue’ fight, reserving the majority of his personal attacks for SNP leader Sturgeon.

But he did use Rudd’s driving metaphor for his own closing statement: “There is a contrast between this side of the argument that is offering hope and that side of the argument that is offering nothing but fear...

“They say that we have absolutely no choice but to stay locked in the back of the EU car, driven in the wrong direction going in a direction we do not want to go; we say we can take back control.”

Brexit campaigner Leadsom, who is a junior minister in the same department as Ms Rudd, accused her boss of engaging in the “lowest of the low” arguments during another heated exchange on the role of the EU in protecting workers’ rights.

Eagle and Sturgeon, who made up the Remain team alongside Rudd, also frequently took swipes at Johnson.

The tactic riled Iain Duncan Smith, the former Work and Pensions Secretary and Vote Leave campaigner.

Speaking to PoliticsHome after the debate, he said Britons were “sick and tired of the personal abuse”.

He said: “They laced that permanently with abuse. Personal abuse, mostly aimed at Boris, sometimes at the others, but mostly at Boris. Scripted, you could see their heads dip to read the scripted lines, and I thought that contrasted starkly with the team that I’m proud of, the Vote Leave team.”

Asked whether he thought Number 10 had choreographed the personal attacks against Boris, he replied: “You’d better ask Number 10 that. All I can say is I thought the contrast was stark, on the one side fear and loathing in a sense, abuse, and on the other side a real passionate sense of positive views about their country and their future.”

But pro-EU Environment Secretary Liz Truss said Rudd’s attacks were part of a “robust debate”, and argued the Leave camp did not have “any answers”.