Should a Single Issue Rejoin Political Party be Established?

One of the issues I quite often see raised on pro-European Social Media is the issue of setting up our own political party.

There are many arguments in favour such as it will give the Rejoin movement a clear focus and enable us to be the tail that wags the dog which Farage and co were so good at doing in the run up to the December 2019 General Election.

Disadvantages include the prospect of splitting the pro Rejoin vote even further than  it already is and the practicalities of establishing and then running a political party.

When I say practicalities, setting up a political party is not a particularly onerous or expensive task. There are forms to complete as you would expect, you need to nominate a Party Leader, someone who is responsible for the accounts that must be prepared to a certain standard similar to that of a limited company, and you need to nominate someone to provide all of the required returns for elections – and that is where the problems start…

As well as completing all the required steps and checks, you also need to convince the electoral commission that you will stand in elections, which is where the costs start to mount up and you start to need specialist knowledge of electoral law, which of course means employing and paying people – in other words you need money, and lots of it.

So, whilst there may well be many good arguments on both sides of the debate about establishing a single issue Rejoin party, my biggest concern has always been these practical issues. Indeed, as a team we have discussed this on more than one occasion, and each time we have come to the same conclusion; that it would be a better route forward initially to attempt to get Rejoin onto the agenda of the existing political parties, and that is the route we are currently following with our political party sub-groups.

We may or may not succeed in that task, but I believe that there are strong arguments that we should at least try over the 18 months to achieve that objective before taking a decision on establishing a Single Issue Rejoin party.