David Cameron has admitted that he is worried about the prospect of a second referendum on Scottish independence if Britain votes to leave the EU.
Until now, he has maintained that the 2014 referendum settled the Scottish independence referendum for a generation.
The British prime minister was answering questions from a studio audience on ITV in a forum he shared with Ukip leader Nigel Farage.
He gave a buoyant performance in his second televised forum of the EU referendum campaign, portraying a vote to stay in the EU as an endorsement of “a Great Britain” over “Little England”.
Frustration
The pair faced questions from the same ITV audience, although they appeared separately. Although the audience posed searching questions about immigration and national sovereignty, it was less overtly hostile than that faced by the prime minister on Sky News last week.
Mr Cameron said he shared popular frustration with the EU but insisted that Britain’s interest lay in remaining within the institution and fighting for reform.
“Leaving is quitting. I don’t think in Britain we’re quitters, we’re fighters,” he said.
Mr Cameron warned against the "illusion of sovereignty" that the Leave campaign promised, arguing that Brexit would lead to Britain being left outside of decision-making that would affect the country. "True sovereignty is about control. Do you have control over your country's destiny?" he said.
With some polls showing the Leave campaign pulling ahead, the prime minister cast the referendum as a choice between remaining within the EU’s single market and taking a leap into the economic unknown.
“The question we have to ask ourselves in this referendum is not, do I like the European Parliament? Frankly I don’t like it very much. The question we have to ask ourselves is: are we better off, are we stronger, are we safer if we stay in this organisation or if we leave? That’s the question on the ballot paper and people I’m sure will share many of my frustrations but frustrations about an institution or indeed with a relationship are often not a justification for walking away,” he said.
Passport
Mr Farage
earlier faced tough questions from the audience on immigration and on the economic consequences of leaving the EU.
One questioner, who works in the pharmaceutical industry, pointed out that much of the industry’s investment in the UK was contingent on its EU membership.
At one point, the Ukip leader took his passport from his pocket and declared that he wanted the return of a “British passport” rather than an EU passport. “This is a referendum for us to vote to get our independence as a nation back,” he said.
Mr Farage told one woman who questioned his approach to immigration to "calm down" and he claimed that one of his statements about immigration had been misinterpreted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.
“I’m used to being demonised,” Mr Farage said.
In an appearance before the home affairs select committee at Westminster on Tuesday, Dr Welby condemned Mr Farage’s claim that immigrants from the EU could expose British women to sex attacks similar to those in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.
“I think that is an inexcusable pandering to people’s worries and prejudices, that’s giving legitimisation to racism which I’ve seen in parishes in which I’ve served and has led to attacks on people in those parishes, and we cannot legitimise that.
“As I have said, fear is a pastoral issue. You deal with it by recognising, by standing alongside, and providing answers to it. What that is, is extenuating fear for political gain. And that is absolutely inexcusable,” Dr Welby said.
