Politics is a dirty old game sure enough and our Government and the Prime Minister are past masters, not that it always does them much good. In fact both need to understand that the British people don’t take kindly to being patronised and tend to react contrarily when faced by scare tactics.

In the 2014 Scottish referendum, the Chancellor of the Exchequer travelled north to tell the Scots that if they voted to leave the UK they wouldn’t be able to keep the pound. This perceived arrogance and negative campaigning almost had the opposite effect since many undecided Scots, outraged at being treated like naughty school kids, evidently voted to leave, making an almost certain Stay vote a lot closer than it need have been.

During the recent contest to choose the new London Mayor the Conservative candidate, Zac Goldsmith, and his backers conducted a smear campaign against Goldsmith’s Labour opponent, Sadiq Khan (a Muslim human rights lawyer) by alleging that he had links with Islamic terrorists. I have no idea whether or not the allegations have any substance but the tactics failed and the electorate, clearly less than impressed by this negative campaigning duly elected Khan to office last week.

Now, our Prime Minister, in a sure sign that he feels he might be losing the EU referendum argument, is trying to scare the British people by telling us that if we leave the EU it could be a threat to peace in Europe and therefore to us in the UK, conveniently ignoring the facts that we are members of NATO, hold a seat on the UN Security Council and boast a nuclear deterrent.

It almost beggars belief that he and his fellow pro-European Union supporters are prepared to sink so low. Perhaps they should be equally prepared for defeat in June’s referendum when the nation sends out the message that, actually we are not all complete idiots.