Erasmus – Johnson’s Berlin Wall by Robert Braban

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Erasmus – Johnson’s attempt at a Berlin Wall.

In 1961 the East German regime built the Berlin Wall to protect their flawed ideology from being exposed through contact of their citizens with those in the free West.

The refusal of Johnson to allow UK young people to have the advantage of continued participation in the Erasmus programme is his personal version of the Berlin Wall; this time starting to build a Psychological barrier between democracy in the EU and nationalism in Little England.

The Berlin Wall survived and oppressed those it entrapped for almost thirty years. Johnson’s psychological barrier must not be permitted to become established and must be blocked at every attempt.

The excuse that there are ample world-wide university programmes now available is designed to give the impression that Johnson has somehow introduced new opportunities. He has not. Any opportunities now available were there in addition to Erasmus.

Happy Christmas!

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Well here we are at Christmas 2020.

I know from looking over comments in the group and on our page that many people are feeling quite down at the moment. That is perfectly understandable given what is going on in the country. Between an inept, dishonest and incompetent government, Brexit and the worst pandemic in a century things are pretty bad.

I wish I could wave a magic wand and make things better but I can’t. There is however cause for optimism with the pandemic. We have several vaccines that do appear to work quite well and despite the best efforts of our government, we are fortunate enough to live in a country that can afford to pay for the vaccine.

Brexit is a different matter. Whatever happens with regards to a deal, what I can say is this. On 1st January there is only one way to for us to go. Upwards.

We know we are right and we know the EU is right for the UK.

What’s more we did not and have not resorted to any of the deceitful, devious or undemocratic methods of the leave campaign. We can hold our heads up high. The Leave Campaign cannot.

Over the next couple of weeks we will start to move some of our ideas forward and we will be asking for volunteers to help with that. We will also be asking you, our members, for your ideas to help with the campaign. So instead of feeling down, please think about what you could do to help out with our upcoming challenges, and start thinking about what ideas you have that may help us to prevail.

I can’t promise it will be an easy fight, but given that right is on our side, we will win. It is only a matter of time until the UK is back at the heart of the EU.

2021 will be the start of our fightback!

I wish you all a peaceful and happy Christmas.

The Wonders of Brexit

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The wonders of Brexit coming to a town near you.

After Brexit the United Kingdom is going to be amazing – every morning I’m going to wake up in my Union Jack jimmy-jams to the sound of a squadron of Spitfires racing overhead and leaving a trail of hot buttered crumpets behind them.

I’ll run to the corner shop past all the happy Scottish and English children who are laughing and squealing with excitement and delight as they make a beautiful statue of the Queen out of happy wriggling British Bulldog puppies – with two Corgis for her eyebrows!

Bunting flutters everywhere in the ‘gin clear’ blue sunny sky and the man from the betting shop steps into the street – “guess what! England just won the World Cup & The Ashes & The Queens’s horse the Grand National and here’s the best bit – Boris Johnson put a bet on it for everyone! we’re all MILLIONAIRES!!! hip hip Hurray! “

The Red Arrows and Lancaster bombers fly overhead dropping ‘fish and chips’ on tiny fluffy white parachutes along with lashings of ginger beer to the appreciative gathered crowds below; as I walk into the corner shop to get my morning paper full of good British news “Good morning, how much please?” I say to Mr. Mohammad’s son, “one penny Sir, everything in the whole shop now costs just one penny!” he laughs, “leave it on the counter, I’m off back to Pakistan – we all are!”

Gosh, he’s right! outside in the streets jolly old Nigel Farage is leading a huge crowd of happy smiley Johnny foreigners – Turks, Poles, Romanians, Syrians – there’s even a few English and Scottish people with heavy suntans mixed up in there! Nigel’s playing ‘Rule Britannia’ on a long pipe, rather like the pipe that takes the gas into your oven, and they’re all following and smiling and talking foreign, bless them!

Just then our exalted PM, Boris Johnson flies overhead in a Concorde made of Bank of England gold, powered by Scottish oil – “don’t worry!” he laughs “I’ve cut out all the bits the French, Spanish and Germans made!” and with that he crashes into the ground at 1200 mile/h.


Courtesy Dave Lewis from a post on our Facebook group.

One Year On

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A year ago just after the depressing news of Johnson’s win I was scrolling through Facebook when i came across a meme that said the campaign to rejoin the EU starts now.

I thought yes why not? Why should we just roll over and accept what has just happened? And why shouldn’t we start to campaign to rejoin now?

So, I started a little Facebook group expecting to end up with around 80 to 100 members and here we are a year later with around 21,500 members in this group alone…

Initially we expanded very quickly and started developing ideas for our campaign. For example, we came up with the idea for our #IAmEuropean campaign for the 2021 census, we started planning regional social meet ups, and alwo some form of pro EU summer festival.

But as we moved into February and March, far more pressing concerns about covid brought most of our plans to a grinding halt, and it is fair to say it has been a difficult and often frustrating year where many of our ideas have had to be put on the back burner.

However, over the last year we have achieved much and have spent a lot of time developing our infrastructure to the point where we now have a variety of different sub groups and pages on Facebook, various twitter and Instagram accounts and a website. We have built a presence and we are starting to influence.

We have developed our four-point plan to move towards our ultimate goal of rejoining the EU and are working towards each one. These four points are:

  1. To challenge the legitimacy of Brexit
  2. To promote the benefits of EU membership.
  3. To place rejoining the EU onto the agenda of the main political parties
  4. To develop, grow and maintain our Rejoin Movement and our European identity

For many people what is going on at present is very difficult with the shadow of no deal hanging over us and our country in just a few short days time, but we have to keep our hope and our belief that we will right this wrong, and that the UK will retake its rightful place at the heart of the EU.

We face a difficult journey and, for that journey to be successful, we need to move on from the events of the past, including the mistakes. What has happened has happened and we cannot change the past. Fighting amongst ourselves will not solve anything, and neither will trying to place blame onto one group of people or another. Both must stop and stop now.

We need to recognise that we are a diverse movement that has support from all sections of the UK population and amongst British people who live in other countries – all ages, all ethnicities, all religions, all geographic regions, and all political views etc etc support our goals, and we need to bridge those divides and work together to achieve our goals if we are to succeed.

Whatever does happen on the 31st December, we cannot sink any lower, and we start the journey to rejoining on 1st January.

The time for talking will stop and the time for action will begin and each and everyone of us needs to ask ourselves what we can do to help because there is a lot that needs doing.

Thank you for being part of this journey over the last 12 months. Covid still hangs over us, but as the threat recedes due to the wonderful efforts of our NHS and the Scientific community, hopefully the next 12 months will be a little easier for us than the last, and we will be able to advance our cause.

I hope you will join me in thanking the team of volunteers that runs our organisation, including the people that run this group. At times it has been a lot of hard work and it has not always been an easy or straightforward task.

We will prevail. Here’s to the next 12 months…

Criminal Lies

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We have seen throughout politics politicians saying things that are not true or that are intended to mislead people. Why do we accept this as a norm? We even listen to people say ‘oh well they all lie don’t they?’ Are we really going to accept that!? I don’t think so. 

Brexit and Trump brought in an extreme level of ‘just say whatever you want and someone will believe it’ politics. The reason why it has been allowed to get so bad is not just due to poor critical thinking skills but also no repercussions for simply lying to voters. 

You’d think something as serious as misleading or lying to the voters would be illegal… but somehow we are in a position where people have accepted it. Why would any believer in democratic systems and processes accept such a thing? 

We could campaign to change it especially if we find enough people who are against lying in politics…

Sign my petition which calls for the introduction of criminal sanctions on MPs who intentionally or recklessly mislead the public with written or unwritten statements. 

It is time we had people running the country who are not playing games but just want to run the country well and for the benefit of the people. 

Sign the petition if you are against lying to the people

Don’t Legitimise Lies and Law Breaking

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Leavers often accuse Remainers of being undemocratic as we have started to campaign for Rejoining the EU. One of the counter arguments to that accusation and perhaps the one that I most often hear is that democracy is an ongoing process and we have every right to campaign to Rejoin.


Whilst I agree with this argument, there is a serious flaw in using that argument, which is why I rarely, if ever, use it myself – It gives democratic legitimacy to the 2016 result.


The 2016 referendum was anything but democratic, indeed a few weeks ago I wrote a substantial response to the Governments rejection of our petition for a public inquiry into the referendum detailing exactly why Brexit has no legitimacy, but why was the vote in 2016 itself not democratic?


The story starts with Cambridge Analytica who stole data from Facebook which resulted in the Information Commissioner’s Office fining Facebook half a million pounds – the maximum amount allowed in pre GDPR days.


This data was then used by the Leave Campaign to psychologically manipulate voters and target them with misleading and false advertisements. The deceit and dishonesty of the Leave Campaign is perhaps best summarised by Professor Michael Dougan who described the Leave Campaign as “dishonesty on an industrial scale” and “one of the most dishonest campaigns this country has ever seen”.


In addition to this dishonesty and the illegal actions of Cambridge Analytica, the Leave Campaign itself broke the law. The Leave Campaign was fined £50,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office for sending millions of text messages without consent and £120,000 for other offences relating to unlawful use of data. The Leave Campaign was also fined £61,000 by the Electoral Commission for breaching electoral law.


Democracy does not include wholescale deceit and dishonesty designed to mislead people into voting in a particular way or driving a coach and horses through both electoral law and data protection laws as the Leave Campaign has done.


We need to stop the use of any argument that legitimises the 2016 result.


It was not legitimate. It was not democratic.


Brexit is not legitimate. Brexit is not democratic.

EU Standards

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Lord Andrew Adonis – European Movement
Tell Michael Gove that downgrading on EU standards is unacceptable

The clock is ticking, and the question on everyone’s mind is will there be a Deal or No Deal?

Boris Johnson’s Government claimed that this deal was “oven-ready” but with little over a month left before we crash out of the EU the worst-case scenario of a No Deal is still not off the table. We are continuing to stand up to No Deal, because we know that it is the worst possible outcome for this country.

But we don’t just want any deal. We are demanding a good deal. We are preparing to respond to the possibility that Boris Johnson’s government achieves the hard Brexit deal they are aiming for. Such a deal would:

  • Damage our NHS and cost lives by restricting access to vital medical supplies.
  • Damage our economy by adding huge costs to businesses and costing jobs across the UK.
  • Damage our environment by firing the starting gun on a race to the bottom.
  • Damage proud British food standards and threaten our farmers’ livelihoods.

We will not know the true costs of any Brexit deal until it is reached and published. But we will stand up to any deal that threatens the rights, standards, and prosperity we have enjoyed in the EU. Anything less than what we had as part of the EU will be unacceptable.

In March 2019, Cabinet Secretary Michael Gove said that “we didn’t vote to leave without a deal.” Today, we want to remind government ministers that nobody voted for a worse deal than we had in the EU. And how better to do that than by reminding Michael Gove of what he said just last year?

Remain turned up to a Knife Fight with a Spoon

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For many people my age I suspect that one of the most defining events of our early adult lives was the Miner’s Strike which still colours the political views of many of those involved over three decades later, and caused a significant divide in the country in much the same way that the 2016 EU membership referendum has done.


Looking behind the dramatic TV pictures and stripping away the rhetoric and spin that surrounded the strike, what we essentially witnessed in 1984 and 1985 was a battle between two opposing political views on how an industry, specifically the coal industry, should be run.


On one side you had Scargill and the Labour movement arguing in favour of nationalised industries to provide employment before profit, and on the other side, Thatcher and the Tories arguing in favour of privately industry driven by profit.


Whatever your position on that argument, it was essentially an opinion on what was best, either nationalised industry providing jobs or private industry providing profits, and with a little thought, the opposing point of view could be easily recognised and understood, even if you did not agree with it.


Contrast that with the situation in 2016 and you immediately see the difference.


In the words of Professor Michael Dougan, the Leave Campaign of 2016 was “dishonesty on an industrial scale”. In other words, it wasn’t about a difference in opinion as in the Miner’s Strike, it was about what was right and what was wrong, what was true and what was a lie.


The Leave Campaign very deliberately set out to deceive the British electorate.


The Remain Campaign struggled to cope with countering those lies and as a consequence largely failed in its attempts to get its own message across. The leaders of Remain had no answer to the disingenuous conduct of the Leave Campaign. Indeed, not only did the Leave Campaign lie on an industrial scale, we subsequently found out that they drove the proverbial coach and horses through both electoral law and data protection laws in pursuit of their goals. It was this failure by the Remain leadership to adequately respond to the tactics of the Leave Campaign that led to Peter Mandelson coining the phrase “Remain took a spoon to a knife fight.’


Sadly, many in the Remain movement, or Rejoin as it has now become, even now often fail to recognise that the Leave Campaign does not care about rules or even democracy itself, and that they will go to any lengths to achieve their goals.


This is why it is so important to tackle misleading or groundless statements about the EU made by politicians such as Justin Tomlinson MP back in September when he claimed that the EU were trying to stop the supply of food to Northern Ireland and to break up the UK.


I do not believe there is any substance to those claims which is why I challenged Mr Tomlinson to produce evidence. He has not done so and that failure can only point to one conclusion.


If we are to prevail, we need to recognise that leavers do not care about rules, laws, or even democracy, and that they will and continue to go to any lengths to achieve their goals. Above all we need to stand up to people who make false claims about the EU and call them out for what they are.


We need to call them out as liars!

Why we need to push Labour on Rejoin now

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There has been a lot of debate in recent months about why Starmer does not come out in favour of rejoin with perhaps the most common arguments being that he needs to bide his time or he is playing a clever game.

Thats not an argument that has any evidence to support it and this article highlights the dangers of those arguments – Labour Leavers are still active and are trying to either remove the issue of Rejoin from the agenda of the Labour Party or move Labour policy into opposition to EU membership.

That is something that we must counter if we are ever to Rejoin.

Articles such as this confirm that we are correct in setting one of our strategic goals as attempting to place Rejoin onto the agenda of the Labour Party.

This article also confirms that we need to be doing so now.


https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news/westminster-news/keir-starmer-should-apologise-to-labour-voters-6316320?fbclid=IwAR0UrrkUFu2rb8chkHnhfL5YqIpU-pgDxk0A3pDhX1Kru5LbV_Z3RcZA9B0

Populism is a cancer that must be cut out from a democracy

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Given that Trumps dishonest and often inflammatory and racist form of populist politics has caused a deep division within American society, I am certain many British people will be pleased to see the back of him.


Unfortunately, however many British politicians such as Johnson and Farage are cut from the same cloth as Trump. This is perhaps best demonstrated by their deceit and dishonesty during the EU membership referendum campaign which was often also inflammatory and racist in nature and caused a deep schism in our country which is yet to heal.


Sadly, we have also seen this malign form of politics more recently, with one example being the totally unwarranted claims about the EU made by Justin Tomlinson MP that I wrote about a few weeks ago.


Tomlinson claimed that EU was trying to split up the UK and prevent food being sent to Northern Ireland from the mainland. Not only do those claims lack any basis in reality, they were inflammatory and headed towards racism.


Despite being publicly challenged to provide evidence to support his claims, Tomlinson has not done so. In fact, all he has done is hit the block button on his social media accounts.
Populism, with its falsehood and often inflammatory and racist narrative has no place in democracy and needs to be cut out like the Cancer that it is.