Brexit Is A Crime

On 23rd June 2016 a crime was committed against the British people.

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On 23rd June 2016 a crime was committed against the British people.

The Leave Campaign deliberately set out to mislead and deceive the British People about the EU.
The Leave campaign lied to us about how the EU works, claimed it was undemocratic when in fact it is more democratic than our own government. They lied to us about the EU being corrupt and never having its accounts signed off when in fact they have been signed off for every year it has been in existence, they lied to us about immigration from the EU and freedom of movement, they lied to us about trade.


The list of lies told by the Leave Campaign is almost endless. In fact, the Leave Campaign mislead and lied to us, the British people, so much, that Professor Michael Dougan of Liverpool University concluded that their campaign was ‘dishonesty on an industrial scale’ and that “Leave conducted one of the most dishonest campaigns this country has ever seen”. He went to say that their entire campaign was “at best misrepresentations and at worst outright deception.”  
This dishonesty by the Leave Campaign created a huge schism in our country and turned not just friend against friend, but colleague against colleague, and family member against family member.


That schism has still not healed five years later.


If that dishonesty was not bad enough, some months later, it emerged that the leave campaign had also committed multiple serious breaches of both electoral law and data protection law. These revelations lead to the referendum result being challenged in court.


Despite the fact that the Government told the British people that they had no choice but to do as instructed by the Britush People in the referendum, as soon as they were in court, they changed their tune and relied on the devious and underhand legal loophole that the referendum was actually only advisory to avoid the result of the referendum being annulled.


Everyone involved in that court case knew that the 2016 referendum result was seriously flawed, indeed, the Governments own Barrister was recorded openly admitting that in the Supreme Court.  Bluntly, Brexit has no legitimacy and never will.


Brexit is a Crime

Brexit Is A Crime

Five Years On

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On the day that Cameron announced the referendum I remember thinking very clearly “Good – the media will get to grips with the likes of Farage and rip them apart over the lies they are telling about the EU”.


Within minutes it was also very obvious that Farage and Co were going to continue lying as he tweeted the false claim about the cost of the EU i.e. the 350 million a week figure that ended up being emblazoned on the side of that infamous red bus.


Sadly, the media never got to grips with that dishonesty, partly because some publications were participating in it themselves, and certainly in the case of the BBC, partly because they abdicated themselves from their responsibility to call out the politicians who were lying, something that the BBC are still refusing to do to this day.

We all know the end result of those lies. Several months later it also came to light that the Leave Campaign had committed multiple serious breaches of both electoral and data protection laws, something which had the referendum been mandatory, would have been more than enough to cause the result of the referendum to be annulled.

Those lies and that law breaking have always been the driving force for me. Lying and law breaking have no place in democracy. None. The issue of our EU membership, whilst very very close to my heart, is secondary to protecting our democracy.

That is why I for one will never give up the fight to restore this country to its rightful place as the heart of the EU. It is the right thing to do. It is the democratic thing to do.

On a personal level I feel the loss of our rights as EU citizens tremendously as for most of the last 20 years, I have either lived or worked in Spain, or worked in an environment where I encountered people from other EU countries on a daily basis, many of whom became close friends.

I had plans to retire to Spain, I had hoped to spend a least couple of years in the next decade or so working in either Barcelona or Prague, and I was looking forward to many many more visits to my many friends in other parts of the EU, where, as I had become used to doing, I would call them on a Wednesday or Thursday, and fly over to Berlin, Ibiza, Prague or somewhere else to stay the weekend with them at short notice.

Of course, all that is now gone, taken away by dishonest leavers for reasons that still, after 5 years, have never been shown to and form of grounding in reality.

That is another reason why I will never give up the fight.

I will admit that I do get quite frustrated with the Remain/Rejoin campaign at times. Indeed, those frustrations are partly the reason why I stopped writing my blog on a regular basis few months ago.

If I could ask just one thing of any Rejoiner who reads this, it would be this – please stop chasing the Remain/Rejoin Unicorns in our version of the sunlit uplands and start being realistic.

If I was pushed and I had to choose one specific issue where this needs to happen it would be the expectation that in a few years’ time we can just walk up to a future Prime Minister and ask for another referendum. That is simply not going to happen without a considerable amount of work from us.

I say that for one simple reason. Research that I conducted earlier in the year (I am a qualified and trained academic researcher) indicates that a substantial proportion of the electorate believes that the 2016 referendum result was fair and legitimate.

Many voters are simply unaware of the extent of the lies told by the Leave campaign. Many voters are simply unaware that the leave campaign committed multiple breaches of the law. That includes many active Rejoin supporters. For example, the data I have indicates that around one third of our own supporters are not aware that the Leave Campaign broke electoral law.

In fact, after seeing the initial results of that research, I am now of the opinion that the main reason why the campaign for a further referendum failed in 2019 was because the Remain campaign failed to convince the electorate that there was a genuine need for another referendum.

If we are to Rejoin within a reasonable timescale this is an issue that we must address, and we must address it first.

We must convince the electorate as a whole that there is a need for a further referendum. We cannot do that simply by arguing that EU membership is good for the UK. We might know it is, but that argument is very easy to counter with the claim that the British people voted to leave, and therefore very easy to ignore. We need a far stronger argument.

The only argument that could secure us a further referendum in the shorter term is to convince the wider electorate that the actions of the Leave Campaign were so bad that Brexit itself lacks legitimacy and that a further referendum is the only fair and democratic way to proceed. No other argument will persuade the electorate or stand up to a serious challenge.

This is the reason why I continue to challenge the legitimacy of Brexit, and why we have recently launched our Brexit Is A Crime campaign.

That is not say that I do not accept that Brexit has happened. It has happened. In fact I accepted Brexit was inevitable on 12th December as soon as the results started to indicate Johnson had won the General Election.  That is why I started this Campaign before midnight on that terrible evening.

But just because Brexit has happened does not mean that I or anyone else should accept that Brexit is legitimate. It is not.

Brexit is a crime, and I would ask anyone who reads this to challenge the legitimacy of Brexit on the grounds of the dishonesty and illegal activity of the Leave Campaign.

If we are consistent with that simple message and sustain it over a period of time, we will convince the electorate that another referendum is needed.  

         

I appreciate that this in many ways is a downbeat message. But don’t despair -there is still hope.

I am writing this on the morning of Friday June 18th – just an hour or two after waking up to the news that Johnson and his dishonest band of English Nationalists (I refuse to call them Tories anymore – they are not) have been defeated in the Amersham and Chesham by election.   

They CAN AND WILL be beaten.

We CAN AND WILL prevail

Complaint to IPSO about the Express

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I have just received a response to my complaint to IPSO about the Daily Express article that wrongly placed the blame for supermarket price rises on the EU (I have placed their e-mail at the end of this post).

IPSO appears to have totally ignored the main thrust of my complaint which was that the prices rises have only arisen as a result of Brexit and that therefore it was both inaccurate and misleading for the Express to infer that the price rises were caused by the EU as they did.

I have therefore asked for the matter to be referred to their complaints committee for review on those grounds and would urge anyone else who has received the e-mail to do the same.

You can do so by simply replying to their e-mail asking them to do so.

My Reply to IPSO

Dear Molly,

Sorry but this is not acceptable and I wish this matter to be referred to the Complaints Committee.

The headline in the Express clearly stated that ‘EU Red Tape’ was responsible for the price rises.

Whilst the changes could be characterised as red tape as you describe in your e-mail, to portray the EU as being responsible for the price rises, or indeed that red tape, in the way that the headline and story infers was both factually inaccurate and misleading as the additional red tape is only being encountered because of Brexit and would not have been encountered had the UK remained in the EU, something which is not reflected in the article in anyway.

The cause of the price rises reported in the story is therefore not the EU as claimed by the Express but rather Brexit itself. To attempt to lay the blame at the door of the EU is therefore both misleading and inaccurate.

It is this misleading and inaccurate placing of blame on the EU for those additional costs and that red tape that I and other are complaining about, not the use of the words ‘red tape’.

Kind Regards

Adam Poole

E Mail from IPSO

I write further to our earlier email regarding your complaint about an article headlined “Food shop alert as YOUR supermarket bill set to soar due to EU red tape” published by the express.co.uk on 2 June 2021.

The Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) has received a number of complaints about this article. In order to be able to respond in a timely manner, we have prepared a response which addresses the various concerns raised by these complaints.

When IPSO receives a complaint, the Executive staff review it first to decide whether the complaint falls within our remit, and whether it raises a possible breach of the Editors’ Code of Practice. The Executive has now completed an assessment of these complaints.

The majority of complainants said the article breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code because they believed the article and headline suggested supermarket price rises are due to “EU red tape”, whereas they believed the higher prices are a result of Brexit. They also said the article implied that these rules were new, rather than existing rules the UK benefited from when it was in the EU. Several complainants suggested the article was inaccurate because import tariffs imposed by the UK are the reason for the increase in supermarket prices.

The article outlined the link between the UK’s predicted higher food prices and the changes to the UK’s trading circumstances, including through comments from the chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, who was quoted as saying “We will likely see these costs filter through in the second half of this year, and with the additional Brexit red-tape this autumn”. It also referred to “Boris Johnson’s new Brexit trade deal” and the “reintroduced customs checks on the trade of many products between the bloc and Britain”. It did not appear to be in dispute that new regulations would apply to the movement of goods; the publication was entitled to characterise regulations as “red tape”, and this provided adequate support to the headline. As such, we did not identify grounds to investigate a breach of Clause 1 on this point.

Some complainants believed that the article was inaccurate because it presented the EU as doing something “underhand or unfair”. The Editors’ Code of Practice makes clear the press has the right to be partisan, to give its own opinion and to campaign, as long as it takes care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, and to distinguish between comment, conjecture and fact. The article included critical commentary from several individuals about the changes and the decisions by the EU, including comments by the Brexit Minister Lord Frost describing them as “unsustainable”, and another comment describing it as “obscene and a disgrace that bureaucrats in Brussels are thinking there is something potentially illegal or wrong with M&S lasagne.” We understand that some complainants disagreed with these opinions, but the publication was entitled to report these critical comments, which were distinguished as such; this did not constitute grounds to investigate a possible breach of Clause 1.

A few complainants also said the article breached Clause 12 (Discrimination) because they considered it blamed Europeans for price rises instead of the UK Government, and stirred up anti-European feelings. Clause 12 is designed to protect specific individuals mentioned by the press from discrimination based on their race, colour, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation or any physical or mental illness or disability. It does not apply to groups or categories of people. Concerns that the article discriminated against Europeans in general did not relate to an individual. This meant that the terms of this Clause were not engaged..

A few complainants also said the article breached Clause 13 (Financial journalism) because they believed it suggested British people are financially disadvantaged due to new EU policy; despite the EU regulations pre-existing before Brexit. Clause 13 relates to journalists not using for their own, or other’s profit, financial information they receive in advance of its general publication. As complaints did not relate to this, the terms of the Clause were not engaged.

You are entitled to request that the Executive’s decision to reject your complaint be reviewed by IPSO’s Complaints Committee. To do so you will need to write to us in the next seven days, setting out the reasons why you believe the decision should be reviewed. Please note that we are unable to accept requests for review made seven days after the date of this email.

We would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider and respond to the points you have raised.

Best wishes,

Molly Richards

Letter to Australia

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The letter I sent to the Australian Prime Minister

The Hon Scott Morrison MP
Prime Minster of Australia
1st June 2021

Dear Prime Minister

If news reports are to be believed, your country is about to agree a trade deal with the UK, something which is only possible because of Brexit.

Brexit came about following a campaign of unprecedented industrial scale deceit and dishonesty and numerous breaches of both UK electoral law and data protection law on the part of the Leave Campaign. Indeed, it is worth noting that there are ongoing attempts to prosecute Boris Johnson for a serious criminal offence, Misconduct in Public Office, for his role in that campaign.

As such, a significant proportion of the UK population does not recognise Brexit as legitimate and would therefore perceive that any trade deal which came about because of Brexit as also lacking legitimacy.

Any future UK government may therefore conclude that it was not under any obligation to adhere to the terms of any Trade Deal, including the one currently reported in the press between Australia and the UK, agreed by the current UK government.

I would therefore urge you to consider very carefully the consequences of entering into such a trade deal with the current UK government, including the potential for substantial damage to be done to Australia’s reputation amongst a significant proportion of the British People.