In the end, it was a young student who caused David Cameron to waver. The British prime minister had already answered Sky News’ questions live and in prime time for twenty minutes on Thursday evening, then it was the turn of the audience in the TV studio. And there sat Soraya Bouazzaoui, a literature student from Southampton. She wanted to know how Cameron envisaged future cooperation with Turkey. After all, Turkey is obviously moving ever closer to the EU.
Perhaps Cameron didn’t quite understand the question, or perhaps he didn’t want to understand it; in any case, he immediately began listing the usual arguments in favor of Britain remaining in the European Union. But Bouazzaoui persisted – and did what Cameron had done several times before: she intervened. “You didn’t answer my question,” she criticized him. She went on to say that she was tired of this constant “gobbledygook,” this scaremongering about the economy. The audience was thrilled – and Cameron’s facial expression became even a little more tense than it already was.
Things get interesting from minute 32.
The Q&A session on Sky News could have been Cameron’s big hour to promote his cause to remain. Even more so because the stage belonged to him alone.
“Backed into a corner, clinging to numbers – this is what a head of government on the defensive looks like,” wrote the FAZ. “It is the basic problem of this election campaign: While the EU supporters keep presenting new horror scenarios about the economic consequences of leaving, the Brexit supporters prefer to focus on the big picture: the nation as such. Hasn’t Britain always been a proud country? Big and strong enough to play a weighty role in the world itself? Not to mention its close ties with America?”