Former David Cameron strategy chief: Treasury is ‘making up numbers’

David Cameron's former director of strategy today accused the Treasury of “making up numbers” for its dossier alleging economic disaster if Britain leaves the EU.

Steve Hilton said they were “phoney figures” and were cooked up with the Treasury in the same way as the Tories’ famous 1992 campaign that claimed a Labour Tax Bombshell would cost every family £1,250 more.

“I invented that stuff. I know exactly how this works: you make up numbers in order to make an argument sound precise when in actual reality it is vague,” he told the Evening Standard.

“It’s completely absurd to argue that you can be so specific about the future. Neither side can say with certainty what is going to happen over 15 or 20 or even 40 years. I think it is getting so tired and confusing for people that they don’t know what to believe.”

Mr Hilton came out for the Brexit side this week. But he said both sides were “treating the public like simpletons” by cooking up scares, such as the Leave claim that Turkey was in line for early EU membership. “The campaigns are not doing justice to the seriousness of the argument.”

He also said Mr Cameron should take part in a head-to-head TV debate against a big Leave campaigner such as Michael Gove or Boris Johnson. He said: “The Prime Minister is a great debater — I don’t see what there is to be frightened of. It’s a big question and the more debates we have the better.”

Mr Cameron has agreed to take part in two EU programmes where he will answer questions in front of an audience, with Mr Gove coming on separately in one, and Ukip’s Nigel Farage in the other.

Mr Hilton, whose polemic against political elites, More Human: Designing A World Where People Come First, is out in paperback this week, warned Tory MPs not to try to oust the Prime Minister, saying the public would be furious if the man they voted for was driven out “by a bunch of MPs”.