2021 has been a year of mixed fortunes for pro Europeans including UKIN.EU, not least because so many aspects of life continue to be overshadowed by Covid. Covid has made, and continues to make, campaigning very difficult, indeed the recent appearance of the Omicron variant puts a big question mark over future events, particularly those that involve large numbers of people. It may be some time before we can go back to some traditional methods of campaigning.

Nonetheless, the first half of 2021 saw a number of successes for us as a campaigning organisation.

We continued to grow in terms of both our size and our reach across all our channels, we developed various formats for future campaign such as our successful ‘blue and yellow’ campaign promoting the benefits of EU membership, we produced several successful videos explaining the history of the EU and its values, our mini campaigns against inaccurate headlines in the Express, and of course we ran our I Am European campaign focussing on the census in March.

Whilst the results of our efforts relating to the census campaign will not be known for several months, the campaign was very well received across the pro European community and managed to rattle our opposition. It was even reported in the Express!

But more important than anything else, the campaign demonstrated that the pro European movement was still in business and wasn’t about to go away.

So, whatever the end result as far as the census is concerned, the campaign was successful – it brought the pro European community together and demonstrated to the world that we are still here and still active.

Unfortunately, the second half of 2021 has been much more difficult and in many ways concerning, and highlights that the pro European movement still has a long way to go if it is to be successful, with two issues in particular giving cause for concern.

Firstly there is the issue of professionalism within the pro European movement.

This has manifested itself in many ways with perhaps the most prominent of these issues being the failure of the organiser of the march planned for May next year to arrange Public Liability Insurance, which leaves anyone involved in organising the march or anyone attending the march unprotected and at risk. Hopefully the issue will be resolved, but sadly several months after the issue was raised, I still haven’t seen any evidence that it has been addressed.

Whilst this is very disappointing, it should be relatively easy to fix. What may not be so easy to address is the issue of the unacceptable behaviour of some individuals within the pro European movement which has sadly involved dishonesty and abusive behaviour, neither of which are acceptable.

Sadly, I have to report that the issue of abusive behaviour has caused problems within our campaign. In September I had no choice but to remove a senior member of the Campaign from UKIN.EU altogether as her behaviour had become so abusive it had created a toxic atmosphere. This caused several problems and unfortunately meant we had to cease active campaigning for a few weeks while those problems were resolved.

I can only apologise for allowing this to happen, I should have removed the individual concerned much earlier than I did. However, despite the fact that the individual concerned continues to try to cause problems for us to this day, the situation rapidly improved following her departure and we are now in much better shape and we have resumed active campaigning.

These two issues show that as a movement we have a long way to go and that we really do need to become much more professional in what we do, even if that means acknowledging our own personal shortfalls, and where necessary, bringing in others with the appropriate skills and experience to carry out tasks where we ourselves are lacking in such skills or experience.

The second issue relates to concerns about the general direction of the Pro European movement.

This concern also manifests itself in many ways, even at the highest level, with some people advocating a route to Rejoin that would take several decades involving membership of the Customs Union and Single Market without a firm commitment to actually Rejoinjng the EU.

For many, including myself, this is simply not acceptable. We are here to Rejoin the EU and nothing less. Anything short of that would not only betray everything we have fought for over the last 6 years but would also allow the Leave Campaign to get away with their wrongdoings in 2016. Nothing less than a return to full membership is acceptable.

What is particularly concerning is that many of those who are advocating membership of the CU and SM appear to be doing so for an ulterior motive, specifically to help the Labour Party electorally. Effectively they are looking to use the pro European movement to help Labour gain power.

Given the cross party nature of the Pro European movement, going down a route which favours one political party over another could prove disastrous for us in the longer term as it may alienate significant parts of our support base. Yes, Labour supporters are vital to the pro European movement, but they do not constitute a majority – Labour voters accounted for 39% of the Remain vote in 2016, not a majority.

Supporters of one party would not find helping or supporting another party acceptable and as a movement we really must remember our cross part support base as we move forward.

Bluntly we need to stay out of political issues that are not directly related to Rejoining the EU, otherwise we will end up alienating one part of our support base or another. Indeed, it is worth pointing out at this point that 35% of the Remain vote in 2016 voted for the Tory party the year before – in other words nearly six million pro Europeans are Tories.

Despite that, many people within the pro European movement, including some prominent individuals, seem intent on the pro European movement becoming part of the wider ‘Get the Tories Out’ movement.

This is fraught with danger as if that were to happen, the pro European movement would be at serious risk of losing the support of those 6 million Tories that voted Remain in 2016. If that happens, we will never regain our EU membership.

Therefore, if we are to be successful then we need to move away from political issues that are not directly connected to Rejoining and we need to be much more nuanced in our opposition to the current Government.

Yes we absolutely must see a change in government, but we need to move away from ‘Get the Tories Out’ and move towards ‘Get the Leavers Out’ or ‘Get the ERG Out’. Indeed, whilst writing this, I am very much reminded of what Chris Patten had to say about the current Government, that they are not Tories but English Nationalists.

In addition to these concerns over the direction of the Pro European movement, I also have grave reservations about the continued focus of the movement on the negative impact of Brexit, which to my mind is simply an extension of the failed Remain Campaign of 2016.

That campaign focussed very heavily on the negative economic and trade aspects of leaving the EU, and indeed many of the warnings contained in that campaign have subsequently proved to have been well founded. Brexit is a disaster from a trade and economic perspective.

However, there are two problems with this.

The first is that it is all to easy for leavers to convince themselves that the pandemic is to blame for the problems, an argument that is very difficult to counter with people who are looking for any excuse to avoid facing up to reality, especially when they don’t really understand trade or economics.

The second, is like it or not, many Leavers simply don’t care about the economy or trade, and that their success criteria for Brexit do not include either. Such individuals are already arguing that Brexit is already a success. They base that claim on the fact that freedom of movement has been ended which amongst other things means wages are rising for UK workers, that the UK is no longer under the jurisdiction of the European Court and so on. These are the criteria that they are judging Brexit on, not the economic and trade arguments that the pro European movement is focussing on.

On top of these two specific issues, there is also the issue of how long the negative effects of Brexit will stay in the memory of the wider electorate, something which is largely reliant on media coverage. No doubt we will see further shortages as the new rules for EU trade start in the new year, but how long will they remain in the media? The answer to that can be found in the lack of continued coverage of the shortages in mid 2021.

Frankly focussing on the negative aspects of Brexit has a very limited shelf life and the pro European movement needs to move away and start focussing on issues which will actually help achieve our goal of Rejoining the EU, and there are plenty of them, such as the benefits of EU membership and explaining to an electorate that is still largely ignorant about the issue, how the EU actually works.

Another area that the pro European movement needs to focus upon is how to ensure that the Leave Campaign cannot repeat its actions in 2016, specifically the dishonesty and the law breaking, because given half a chance, they will do exactly the same again. For example, hardly a week goes by without a prominent Leaver making a misleading if not outright dishonest statement about the EU, or without seeing a misleading if not false headline in one of the usual so called ‘news’papers.

Over the course of the last year we have seen that the MPs code of conduct is not worth the paper it is written on when it comes to MPs misleading or lying to their constituents, and with Johnson himself making the final decisions when it comes to the ministerial code of conduct, that is also about as useful as a chocolate teapot!

In addition IPSO seem incapable of making a decision that goes against a newspaper such as the Express, the Government seems determined to reduce the Electoral Commission to nothing more than a paper tiger, and political advertising is not covered by any code of conduct or regulation at all!

If we are to stop a repeat of the Leave Campaign’s behaviour in 2016 then there is much to do in this area, and as we have seen in recent weeks, the British Public does appear to have reached the limit when it comes to dishonest politicians!

So what does this mean for UKIN.EU and the Campaign to Rejoin the EU?

We will continue to develop and run our ‘Blue and Yellow’ Campaign highlighting the advantages of EU membership, and we will continue to work on producing easy to understand short videos about the EU and how it works.

We will also continue to develop our campaign aimed at putting a stop to misleading and incorrect press coverage of the EU and to strengthen press regulation. We will also work on raising awareness of the fact that political advertising is not regulated in any way and campaign for an independent system of regulation to be put into place.

We will also continue to campaign for an effective system to regulate the conduct of both MPs and Ministers that stops them misleading the electorate.

We will also continue with our efforts to build pro European communities within all UK political parties and to maintain and promote our European identity whenever the opportunity presents itself.

All of course with the eventual goal of Rejoining the EU!

We are of course always open to other ideas to help achieve our goals and volunteers are always welcome

Happy new year to you all!