We cannot afford to give our opponents a free run
Amongst the most common comments I see relating to the campaign to Rejoin are those along the lines that we must wait or the time isn’t right or we can’t do anything now because the Tory party has such a huge majority. Other comments relate to either Keir Starmer or Ed Davey playing some sort of clever long game over Rejoining which whilst I sincerely hope such claims are correct, I have to say I have never seen any supporting evidence to back up those claims. To be honest they seem like wishful thinking rather than having any real substance.
Similarly, I often see comments that that we must wait for the economic damage of Brexit to become apparent when we all know that many Leavers simply don’t care about the damage they are causing or that the damage caused by Brexit will simply get lost in the economic damage caused by the pandemic.
The end effect of all of these comments is that far too many Rejoiners are simply doing nothing to promote our cause. So, I thought I would take a look and see what some of our opposition is up to on social media.
Leave.EU has nearly a million followers on Facebook and nearly 300,000 on Twitter and is posting dozens of times every day on both channels.
The Brexit Party or whatever Farage’s latest incantation is called have around 200,000 followers on Facebook and Twitter and again are posting regularly. They have also made it very clear on social media that they intend to field candidates in the forthcoming local elections.
Labour Leave have just under 40,000 followers on both Twitter and Facebook and again are very active posting a dozen or so times a day.
If these organisations are active on social media you can bet the shirt on your back that they are active in other areas. For example, Labour Leave will be trying to push their agenda at a constituency level and at a national level including at the party conference.
At yet people in our movement are still saying the time isn’t right, its too early etc etc etc…and in the process giving our opponents a free run.
That has to stop and stop now.
Nobody is going to do this for us. We have to be proactive. Our opponents haven’t stopped and that means we must continue.
That doesn’t necessarily mean we should go out and start campaigning on the street and pushing our Rejoin message out to the electorate immediately, but we do need to be fighting our corner in other ways, particularly behind the scenes and within all of the political parties, which includes putting motions forward to party conferences such as the one to be put to the forthcoming Lib Dem spring conference which commits the party to EU Membership in the longer term.
