When it comes to campaigning, Britain can do better than this

Statistics are there to be abused, words to be misquoted: politics as usual, as it has been down the ages

Priti Patel and Iain Duncan Smith, who are among the Tory ministers campaigning for Britain to leave the EU (Getty)

It is a curious irony, to say the least, that many of those levelling the charge that David Cameron is too “out of touch”, or “posh”, or “establishment” to make the case to stay in the European Union are themselves no strangers to wealth, private education of membership of the political elite – and often all three. As an argument for Britain leaving the union, it is almost comically pathetic.

There is negative campaigning that distorts what opponents say or mean; there is negative campaigning that twists facts and presents possibilities as certainties; and there is negative campaigning that operates by fear and smear.

Statistics are there to be abused, words to be misquoted, hysteria there to be marshalled: politics as usual, as it has been down the ages.

All of these tricks have been deployed by both sides in this referendum campaign, and the situation seems set to become uglier still. But the charge of “too posh to comprehend working people”, levelled by one bunch of posh Tories towards another, is so absurd as to bring the venerable traditions of low political technique into disrepute through ridicule. They can do better than this.