LONDON: Prime Minister David Cameron warned on Monday that a British exit from the EU would threaten peace on the continent, as the campaign for next month’s crucial referendum gathered steam after regional elections.

With polls showing the two campaigns are neck-and-neck, Cameron and the de-facto leader of the “Leave” movement, former London mayor Boris Johnson, were both stepping up efforts to woo undecided voters.

Leaving the 28-member bloc in the June 23 referendum would be a “reckless and irresponsible” risk to Britain’s economic stability that would leave it “permanently poorer”, Cameron warned.

He also said a “Brexit” would threaten Britain’s strength and security in the world, along with peace on the continent if “Europe’s foremost military power” quit the European Union.

“Isolationism has never served this country well,” he said in a speech at the British Museum in London.

“Whenever we turn our back on Europe, sooner or later we come to regret it.

We’ve always had to go back in, and always at a much higher cost.” Cameron said that while Europe had largely been at peace since the end of World War II, it was barely two decades since the Bosnian war, while the continent was facing a “newly belligerent Russia”, with conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine.

Published in Dawn, May 10th, 2016