Tag Archive for: Rejoin

Pro Europeans need a reason to vote for Starmer

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Earlier this week Starmer said that there was no route back to EU membership and as usual when Starmer opens his mouth on Brexit a lot of heads start nodding. So let me say this yet again.

There is no reason why we cannot campaign to rejoin the EU now. None. There may not be a strong majority with the electorate for rejoining at present but what is the point of campaigning if it is not to change minds?

When Farage started campaigning to leave the EU, was there a majority in favour of quiting – No! Did that stop him? No! He went ahead and changed minds (albeit by lying) – that is what we need to do now (without the lying)!

Starmer is simply chasing the red wall vote instead of leading on the issue of Brexit and that needs to change. WE need to change his mind!

That is what campaigning is all about!

Yes, there will be obstacles that need to be tackled along the way – so let’s identify them and tackle them rather than just giving up and rolling over in defeat and accepting what Starmer says!

I am sick to death of hearing Starmer is right. No he is not right! All he wants to do (understandably) is follow what he feels is the easiest route into number 10. He wants power, simple as that. That is his job as Leader of the Labour Party. But if that involves being pro brexit, then I and many others will never vote for him.

I and many other pro Europeans are not Labour supporters and the pro European movement is not here to get Starmer elected. In fact just 39% of Remain voters in 2016 had voted Labour the year before in the general election.

If Starmer wants our support he must offer us something better than make Brexit work! He must give us a good reason to vote for him. Voting to swap one pro brexit PM whose ideology many of us disagree with for another pro brexit PM whose ideology many of us disagree with offers us nothing!

So my message to Starmer supporters and Labour Party members and supporters is this – if you want the rest of us to vote for Starmer at the next election, campaign and take action within the Labour Party to change his and the Labour Party stance on Brexit and EU membership. Give us a reason to vote for him instead of repeatedly trying to tell us that there is no alternative!

Three Arguments against Rejoining that don’t Stack Up by David Broucher

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If you talk to people about the UK re-joining the EU, those who are not in favour tend to come up with three arguments that they think terminate the discussion.

First, we will have lost the rebate, so we’ll have to pay a massive contribution to the EU budget.

Second, we will have to join Schengen.

Third, we will have to adopt the Euro.

It’s worth taking a detailed look at these, because things are not necessarily as they seem.


Leavers love to focus on the gross contribution to the EU budget, the infamous £350 million a week that featured on the side of a big red bus in 2016. As we all know, this is not the same as the net contribution, which is what is left after you subtract from what we paid in all the money that we used to get back, not just through the rebate but through the agricultural, environmental and regional funds. Even this calculation does not tell the whole story, because it misses all the non-budgetary advantages we used to get from membership which were the main reason for joining in the first place; but at least it puts the budget discussion on a more rational footing that just talking about the gross contribution.


The reason we needed a rebate in the 1980s was that our receipts from the EU budget were not sufficient to balance out the large amount we were obliged to pay in under the revenue system. This complex calculation used to hinge on things like GDP, the VAT base, agricultural efficiency – a whole series of factors that will likely have changed by the time we re-join. To put it bluntly, Brexit is likely to have done so much damage to the British economy that our GDP will have shrunk in comparison with the EU average. This means not only that our gross contribution will be lower, but also that our ability to receive funds from various EU support budgets will have increased. I do not know, of course, whether this effect will be large enough to turn us into a net recipient of EU funds, but it will certainly change the calculation. Not having a rebate is not, therefore, the clinching argument the Leavers think it is.


When it comes to Schengen and the Euro, people tend to assert that membership of both is automatic for all EU members, so we would have to be in both if we were to re-join. That is not the case. There are many existing members that do not take part in either policy.

The exceptions are not, as is commonly supposed, limited to temporary transition measures for the new members in Eastern Europe but include permanent exceptions for several older members as well.

Ireland and Cyprus are not in Schengen, while Denmark and Sweden are not in the Euro.

If the UK were to re-join the EU, the negotiation would not be about whether we should join either policy immediately on accession, but rather about whether we would adopt a long-term commitment to join when conditions were right. As long as we were to retain a say in whether the conditions were met, we should be able to remain outside either policy for as long as necessary. It goes without saying that both Schengen and the Euro are not all downside but also have considerable advantages.

The UK has never been able to have a rational conversation about the balance of advantage to either policy because logical thought was always drowned out by political noise. Perhaps the day will come when a more balanced discussion will be possible.


These arguments are complex and not easy to transmit to people who will not be willing to hear them. At all events, however, Re-joiners should not accept that their views can be overridden by sloppy thinking about the conditions for re-joining.

2021 – some thoughts about the last year and the future

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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!

A Strategy for the Rejoin Movement

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There have been a few questions recently about objectives and activities and indeed what our strategy is and should be.

We developed a high-level strategy a few months ago that focuses on four key issues. I thought it would be worthwhile to highlight these again, including why it is important to pursue each one and what we have done and are doing towards them.

Firstly though, there are a couple of intertwined issues which keep cropping up which do need addressing.

Some within the pro European movement believe it is too early to campaign for Rejoin as Brexit supporters need to see the damage Brexit does.

I disagree as this is essentially a rehash of what leavers called project fear.

Even in the midst of Brexit induced labour shortages affecting everything from bus timetables, the NHS and food supplies, we are seeing Leavers denying the obvious and blaming everyone and everything other than Brexit for the adverse consequences of their actions. They are simply not going to face up to Brexit being responsible – either now or in the future.

This is largely down to the way the original Remain Campaign was run with its focus on the risks of leaving the EU and the subsequent response of the leave campaign leadership, which was to say Remainers said that all the doom and gloom would happen the day after the referendum – which it obviously did not. The damage is much more insidious and taking time to become apparent and therefore not readily visible to many and is often hidden behind the effects of the pandemic.

Furthermore, as we have also now seen, even when Leavers are backed into a corner and have to admit that there are problems with Brexit, they will say it is all worth it – taking back control, independence and everything else that they spout out to try and justify the damage they have done .

The bottom line here is that just as focussing on the negative aspects of Brexit didn’t work for the Remain Campaign in 2016, focussing on the negative aspects of Brexit isn’t going to work for the Rejoin campaign now or in the future.

The pro European movement needs to recognise that and move on.

In addition to recognising that we also need to recognise what I believe is the biggest achievement of the Pro European movement.

Over the last 5 years together we have built an amazing cross party pro EU movement, the largest in the EU. There are very few examples of such grass roots cross party organisations in our country or indeed the wider world.

We simply must not let what we have built wither and die – doing nothing will cause that to happen, which is in itself a very strong reason for starting our campaign now.

There is also much we can do now in terms of building our organisation and organising ourselves for what lies ahead. Preparing now will also allow us to lay the ground for future battles on our own terms not those of our opposition, thereby giving us the advantage whenever that next referendum comes. We can do much of this without actually overtly campaigning for Rejoin.

As I mention above the strategy we developed consists of four strands of action

  1. Challenge the legitimacy of the decision by the current Government to take out of the EU.

As a movement we face two distinct and separate tasks. The first of these is to persuade a reluctant political establishment and electorate that a further referendum is needed.

We cannot just walk up to a future Prime Minister and ask for another referendum without a strong clear argument for one. Simply saying because we want one won’t do the trick and neither will saying because EU membership is good for us.

Both those arguments are easily countered by simply saying we held a referendum, you lost, why should hold another one. Even when there are clear benefits to EU Membership and clear disadvantages of Brexit, it is too easy for our opposition to say that is what the electorate voted for. We need a far stronger argument, particularly as my own research indicates the electorate largely sees Brexit as legitimate.

Fortunately for us the Leave Campaign provided that argument with their unprecedented industrial scale deceit and dishonesty, and their repeated serious breaches of both electoral law and data protection laws.

The research I mention above also indicates that most of the electorate are simply not aware of what the Leave Campaign did. We should make them aware and use these issues to challenge the legitimacy of Brexit.

We have started down this route with our petition calling for a public inquiry into the referendum in 2016. We should push that demand home and insist that the Leave Campaign is scrutinised and shown up for what it was – a deceitful and deceptive campaign deliberately designed to deceive the electorate.

  1. Promote the benefits of EU membership.

This is something that has simply not been done in a planned systematic way. The remain campaign spent far too much time focussing on the risks of leaving and countering the lies told by the leave campaign.

We must build a positive image of EU membership by focusing on the benefits of membership and portraying the EU in a positive light as this will be much more likely to persuade people to vote in favour of EU membership than a campaign focussing on the risks of Brexit of being outside the EU.

This campaign also needs to educate people about the role of the EU, its history and how it works. A considerable proportion of the electorate simply do not know about these issues, something which most often manifests itself in terms of the false claims about the EU being run by unelected bureaucrats.

We have started this work with our Blue and Yellow campaign highlighting the benefits of membership and we have started to produce informative videos about the EU. This campaign needs to be developed and sustained.

  1. Build pro European communities within all UK Political parties

As much as some of us may not like it, the levers of power in this country are held by political parties and unless we can persuade those political parties to back Rejoin, we are simply never going to prevail even if we start a new single issue party, something which would be fraught with difficulty and would generate substantial controversy within the pro European movement.

Whilst some of our small parties are overtly pro European, the present situation needs a lot or work.

The Liberal Democrats official policy is to support EU membership, however the current leadership is very reluctant to state that.

The Labour Party Membership is, so we are told, mainly Pro European, however the leadership of the labour party has tuned its back on the pro European vote and is chasimg the Red Wall vote.

The Conservative Party has of course been completely taken over by our opponents. However until the 2019 General Election, a majority of Tory MPs were pro European, indeed 19% of Remain voters in 2016 voted Tory in 2019.

This tells us that there is still support within the Tory party for EU membership. We must encourage those pro Europeans to make their voice heard. If that proves impossible then another avenue may be to encourage the establishment of a new right of centre pro European party.

We have also started work in this area with the establishment of social media groups and channels for all the main UK Political parties. We must develop those and encourage pro Europeans to join political parties and become active. We must encourage party members to campaign within each party for EU membership including playing motions onto the agenda of party conferences.

  1. Develop, grow and maintain our Rejoin Movement and our European identity.

Whilst we have a large pro European community in the UK, that community is deflated after the events of the last 5 years, and has suffered as a result of the pandemic which has understandably dominated political life for the last 18 months.

We need to rejuvenate this community, strengthen it and build it by celebrating our European identity.

We had big plans in this area, but sadly we had to curtail much due to Covid. Despite that we ran our I Am European campaign around the Census in March. We don’t know the outcome in terms of numbers and we won’t for a while, but despite that it was a huge success, we gained press coverage and we brought the movement together with a very practical campaign that everyone could easily participate in whilst staying safe.

We need to revisit this area and as the pandemic comes to an end and hold more events that bring is together.

We have of course started this with our planed March For Rejoin on 7th May 2022 but we do need to organise other events, not just nationally in major cities such as London, but in every town and city in the land. Considerable support for this was shown in a recent poll that we ran.

So to answer those calling for a clear strategy and plan of action, we do have one, so please get involved. Sign up for the March For Rejoin, join one of our political party sub groups and indeed a political party, sign and share petitions and share our activities and pro European social media posts.

For those of you who are keen, please also consider volunteering to help us. Yes, our team has grown. We have around 20 people actively working on our campaign now, but we need more. The more people we have the more we can do – so please get in touch if you want to help out!

Remain and Rejoin Unicorns

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Remainers and now Rejoiners often talk about Leavers wanting their sunlit uplands filled with rainbow coloured Brexit unicorns. Often this colourful narrative appears to have its roots in the lack of knowledge demonstrated by Leavers when they discuss the EU and how it works which rarely bears any resemblance to reality.

On other occasions, this narrative stems from a failure by Leavers to appreciate the realities of a world where Britain is no longer a superpower that can get its own way with the use of gunboat diplomacy. For example,  in a world where the EU has arguably the largest economy in the world, the EU does not ‘need us more than we need them’ and we do not ‘hold all the cards’ in any particular set of trade negotiations, especially those with the EU.

Whilst Remainers/Rejoiners have a much more realistic concept of the UK’s position in the world post Brexit and indeed are often far more knowledgeable about the EU, this does not necessarily mean that there are no Remain or Rejoin unicorns running around in our version of those same sunlit uplands.

Possibly the best example of this to date has been the idea floating around for most of last year that Starmer was just biding his time and had some sort of cunning Baldrick style plan up his sleeve to get us back into the EU. I lost count of the number of times I heard people say give Starmer a chance, or he has to win round his own people or once he has won the election he will take us back in to the EU.

With hindsight most of the Remain/Rejoin community now recognise just how wrong those hopes were with the reality of the situation really hitting home when he instructed his MP’s to vote in favour of Johnson’s deal over Christmas.  

But for many months this was our very own unicorn running happily around our own version of those same sunlit uplands. Consequently, the issue of Labours position on EU membership is only now becoming apparent and for many months we as a movement did nothing to advance our cause within the Labour party. Worse, during that time we also allowed our opponents free reign within the party and we are now faced with the very difficult task of bringing the Labour Party back over to our way of thinking on the issue of EU membership.   

Given the difficulty we will face with that task as our opponents now appear to be very well entrenched in positions of power within the Labour party,  it is important that we do not make similar mistakes in the future. Sadly, however there are one or two other Remain/Rejoin unicorns running around.

Perhaps the foremost of these is the notion that somehow an alliance of progressive parties will be formed to sweep away all opposition before us, including the current Tory Government. For our movement, this notion is concerning in two ways.

Firstly, it ignores the important issue of the cross-party nature of our movement. 35% of Remain voters in 2016 voted Tory the previous year, and although that figure had fallen dramatically by December 2019, nearly one in five Remainers voted Tory in the December 2019 General Election. Put bluntly, a significant proportion of our own support base does not want to see a progressive alliance.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, this notion assumes that Starmer will wish to become involved in a progressive alliance of some sort. Why would he? For Starmer and his advisors to be interested in such a proposition they would need to be of the opinion that the only way they could win an election was as part of such an alliance. Why would they think that?  

The Labour party is a major political force in this country with considerable resources, a developed infrastructure and an entrenched political support base. They will think they can win on their own right up until the moment the result of the next General Election is announced.       

Similarly, another Remain/Rejoin unicorn is that all we need to do is persuade the Labour Party to embrace PR and change the electoral system and all will be well, as in the General Election after next, pro-European parties will sweep into power.

Again, I would ask the same question. Why would Starmer and the Labour Party change an electoral system that gives them an advantage? Yes, PR may be a fairer way of electing a Government, but there are valid arguments against PR and very strong reasons why both our main parties would wish to keep the current system unchanged.

It may well prove possible to persuade the Labour party that they should commit to changing our electoral system however we need to be realistic. There will be significant opposition. Furthermore,  given the cross-party nature of the Remain/Rejoin movement, many of our own supporters will be opposed to any such change meaning we would risk alienating large sections of our own support base by supporting such a change.    

Another example of a Remain/Rejoin unicorn is the popular idea within our movement that Leave voters will all of a sudden see sense because of the tremendous damage that Brexit is inflicting upon us.

That Brexit will inflict such damage is beyond doubt, indeed considerable damage has already been done. The issue however is linking that damage to Brexit in the minds of Leavers, particularly against the background of the pandemic. The pandemic will mask much of that damage and make its cause difficult to ascribe. After nearly three months elapsing since the end of the transition period there is no sign of a major shock to the economy that is directly and clearly attributable to Brexit.

Frankly I do not think we will see such a shock, rather, what we will witness is slow inexorable economic decline. That doesn’t mean to say that a shock will not happen, or that it has to be economic. The break-up of the Union via Scottish Independence could cause such a shock and we may shortly find out how likely that is with approaching Sottish elections.

But even if we see Scottish independence, I am far from convinced that will provide the required shock. Rather disparagingly we often refer to Leavers as ‘Little Englanders’. Whilst we should not be so disparaging there is possibly some truth in such remarks. Looking over data from the last census I noticed that the only areas in the UK where a majority of people declared themselves to be British were certain areas of Northern Ireland with the majority of people in England describing themselves as English.

That makes me wonder just how many Leavers really would be concerned about Scottish Independence to the extent that it changed their views on Brexit.  

The upshot of all of this is that we must be realistic.

We cannot count on the Labour Party suddenly coming over to our way of thinking on Europe, or riding to our rescue as part of a progressive alliance or by supporting PR. If we want the Labour Party to support EU membership, we must work to change their views inside the party and outside.  

Similarly, we cannot count on Leavers changing their views and coming round to our way of thinking because of any adverse effects of Brexit. If we want Leavers to change their views and support EU membership, we must work to change their views by promoting the benefits of EU Membership.

There are no sunlit uplands in our journey back to EU membership, just hard work. Unicorns, rainbow coloured or not, have no place in the Rejoin movement.

Endless Lockdown doesn’t have to mean Endless Frustration

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Over the last few weeks I have seen many people commenting on social media in a manner that indicates that they are quite frustrated about what they see as a lack of “campaign” action towards achieving our goal of Rejoining the EU.

This has made me wonder what people think of when someone mentions the word “campaign”?

For me, when I started the Facebook group “Campaign to Rejoin the EU” on that awful evening in December 2019, I’m not quite sure exactly what I had in mind, but I probably envisaged activities such as marches protests and other large outdoor events. Given the background of the Remain movement, I suspect many other Rejoiners had, or indeed still have, the same vision.

There are a number of reasons why this hasn’t happened, and indeed cannot currently happen. Funding is one, but the biggest by far is the worst pandemic for a century, which for all intents and purposes, has prevented any large-scale events from happening and probably will do for some time to come.

I suspect this is where much of the frustration originates.

Given this I thought I would look up the definition of the word “campaign”. The definition in my dictionary is “an organized course of action to achieve a goal.”

This definition very much reminds me of my time as a marketing communications manager where most of my work revolved around planned and highly organised promotional campaign projects that had one of three goals:

  1. Raising awareness of the company or Brand
  2. Promotion of our Brand Values
  3. Increasing sales either generally or of a particular product.

At the start of each campaign, we would hold what we termed a “launch team” meeting to identify and plan what needed to be done which included brainstorming promotional ideas as budgets would vary and would sometimes be very limited, meaning we couldn’t rely on having the money to advertise on TV or in the Press.

Some of the activities we came up with were really quite creative. We spent several very interesting mornings handing chocolates out with brochures to rush-hour commuters on Liverpool Street Station, we played Scalextrics with journalists for an evening, and we produced a short video based upon men behaving badly.

However, before we could do any of these more exciting activities, we often had to consider what mundane background work needed doing before we could start putting the actual ‘campaign’ into effect.

Indeed, I remember one occasion where the high value and very different nature of a new product meant that we could not actually start selling the product for several months as we had to put in a whole new infrastructure for handling customer enquiries. This included a new telephone enquiry handling team, a new section of our website and underlying IT infrastructure, the recruitment of a new administration team and extensive training for selected people in our sales team to be able effectively sell this new product. In other words, we had to prepare the ground before we could actually start promoting and selling the product.

This is very much where the Rejoin campaign is now. We have to prepare the ground for the forthcoming battles and we have to be creative and realistic about which campaign activities we can undertake given our lack of funding and the restrictions caused by the pandemic.

We also have to be realistic about timescales – the earliest opportunity for a new referendum is at least 4 years away, possibly longer, given who currently occupies number 10. However, whilst we may not be in a position to march on Parliament demanding an immediate referendum in our millions as we did just a short time ago, we can still ‘campaign’ – and there is much that needs to be done!

We have to recognise that whilst we are already ‘sold’ on the idea of Rejoining, many of the wider electorate need convincing that we should. This requires us to prepare the ground by putting into place the infrastructure such as websites and social media channels to enable us to communicate with the wider electorate rather than just ourselves in our closed social media bubbles.

In exactly the same way that it was necessary for myself and my colleagues to raise awareness of the company we worked for and promote our brand values before we could promote and sell our products, the first objective for Rejoin needs to be raising awareness of our ‘organisation’, our objectives and to communicate our values to the wider electorate. Effectively we need to explain the reasons why we want to rejoin the EU to the wider electorate before we can start promoting another referendum and actually campaigning for their votes.

Whilst we may not be able to run events that involve large public gatherings, we are only really limited in what we can do by our own imagination. There is nothing to stop us working towards our goals in other ways such as running online mini-campaigns that prepare the ground for mass public events and the actual campaign to Rejoin in a few years’ time.

• We can reinforce our European identify with campaigns such as our #IAmEuropean campaign linked to next months census.
• We can organise parliamentary petitions such as the successful recent petition calling for it to be made a criminal offence for MPs to mislead constituents which send a clear message to the leave campaign that their devious and dishonest activities will not be tolerated next time.
• We can start building online pro EU communities within all the major political parties with a view to placing Rejoin firmly onto their agenda.

We simply have to be creative about what we do until we are in a position to campaign in more traditional ways. We need to start coming up with ideas and there is no limit.

These ideas do not need to be complex but do need to be varied as we are all different and not everyone will be comfortable undertaking all activities. For example, I am not particularly comfortable being videoed or working street stalls. Others are. We each need to work to our strengths. One of my strengths is writing, and not just blogging. I regularly contribute to social media groups in my local area and write letters to the local paper. It may not sound much but people do take notice.

Recently on a local Facebook page I posted about a controversial EU linked issue. An acquaintance in the local area, who I am 90% sure voted leave, said to me shortly afterwards that whilst he had started to agree with much that I have been saying, he disagreed with me on that particular issue. I had no idea that he was even reading what I was saying, let alone that he was beginning to accept my arguments and change his mind!

Despite the pandemic, people are prepared to listen to what we have to say and it is possible to change minds. There are other ways of getting our message across than mass gatherings. So instead of getting frustrated that we cannot march en masse to Parliament, let’s all think about something that we can do as individuals that will move us towards our goals.

Sign a petition, sign up for the #IAmEuropean campaign, join a political party and promote EU membership in that party, write letters to the local press, contribute to local social media groups, run a social media group or channels. The list really is endless.

Yes the pandemic is frustrating, but there is so much we can do towards Rejoining.

Rejoin Needs to get its Act Together

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Sadly, hardly a day goes by without coming across some sort of argument between Rejoiners.

These arguments are almost always based upon some form of party political or ideological disagreement. Everyone seems to want to attack Tory Rejoiners, Starmer supporting Rejoiners want to attack Corbyn supporting Rejoiners and vice versa, Scottish Nationalist Rejoiners want to attack Scottish Unionist Rejoiners and vice versa. The list goes on and on and is pretty much endless. Furthermore, the mere mention of some staunchly Pro-European individuals such as Tony Blair can be enough to start an argument.

Given that support for Rejoin is spread right across the political spectrum this needs to stop otherwise our goal of Rejoining will become increasingly unlikely and our movement, which has been painstakingly built over the last 5 years, will fragment and die.

As a movement we must stop fighting between ourselves and focus on issues related directly to our membership of the EU. However, there is also a need for considerable improvement in that area as well.

Imagine yourself as an outsider listening in to what the Rejoin movement is saying. Many of the messages we effectively broadcast to the outside world are inconsistent and contradictory, and can even inadvertently legitimise what our opponents are saying and end up working against us. Furthermore, some of what we say is very complex and difficult to understand and often very negative.

There is still a tendency within Rejoin to focus on the negative aspects of Brexit. Apart from ironically the fishing industry, the dire predictions of mass bankruptcies and associated job losses are unlikely to materialise. Even if they do, they will either be masked by Covid, or are going to occur over a longer, slower period of time rather than the quick cataclysmic event that would be needed to shock average leave voters into the realisation that Brexit is a bad thing that they should not have supported in the first place. Even then, as has become apparent in recent weeks, many if not most staunch leave voters will either blame everybody and everything other than Brexit, or will claim Brexit is worth it to ‘get back our sovereignty’.

Other arguments presented by Rejoin, such as the cause of Brexit being the desire to avoid EU anti-tax avoidance rules have no resonance at all with large sections of the electorate such as Red Wall voters and never will. Some arguments, such as challenging the result of the 2016 referendum on the grounds that there should have been a super majority, whilst understandable, actually end up having the opposite of the desired effect and confirm the legitimacy of the 2016 result in the eyes of many ordinary voters.

This inconsistency and contradictory nature of what we are saying a movement is not helping our cause and needs addressing urgently.

When discussing our campaign over Christmas a fellow Rejoiner pointed me in the direction of Moscovici, a French social psychologist, and his work on minority influence. Whilst I am still exploring his work, the potential it has to aid our cause rapidly became apparent to me.

Amongst other things Moscovici theorises that consistent arguments that do not change over time and that are perceived by the majority as legitimate and unbiased will succeed in changing the views of that majority. Implicit in this theory is a need for the arguments presented by the minority to be simple and straightforward so that they are readily understood by that majority.

The implications for the Rejoin Movement are that instead of the multiple, complex and often contradictory and inconsistent arguments that we usually present to the outside world, we need to simplify what we are saying and present far fewer but more consistent messages that will not change over time.

Effectively, we need to forget issues such as super majorities, tax avoidance and what our opponents’ term ‘project fear’, and focus on messages that are easily understandable by the majority of the electorate and which will resonate with them. Fortunately for us many such messages are readily apparent, meaning it is simply a case of adopting them and using them consistently. Examples include:

  1. We reject Brexit as the Leave Campaign lied, broke Electoral Law and Data Protection Law
  2. Nationalism and false claims about immigration are the root cause of Brexit.
  3. Membership of the EU is beneficial and is a good thing for the UK

Adopting a smaller and simpler set of messages such as these for broadcast to the outside world does not mean that we cannot engage in deeper discussion amongst ourselves or indeed with the wider electorate. However, before the wider electorate will engage with us in these deeper, more complex arguments, they need to accept that we have something to say that is legitimate and worthwhile, which is where these simpler consistent messages come in.

These simpler consistent messages are the key to that deeper engagement and persuading a politically apathetic electorate that we have a valid argument and that the question of EU membership needs further consideration.

Starmer, the Red Wall and Rejoining

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Starmer’s decision to chase the Red Wall vote and the expense of Rejoining the EU has caused considerable concern to many in the Rejoin movement. This vote chasing in the long term will do nobody any favours and will most likely backfire on Labour. His stance is probably strongly influenced by his new policy chief and committed Leaver, Claire Ainsley. However, what is really needed from Starmer is some leadership on the issue rather than simply chasing any particular group of voters – Red Wall or Rejoiners.

The nature of the Leave Campaign in 2016 was dishonest beyond anything ever seen previously in British politics. To paraphrase Professor Michael Dougan of Liverpool University, the Leave Campaign was dishonest on an industrial scale on just about every major issue.

I came across one such example yesterday when attempting to ‘discuss’ Brexit’s lack of legitimacy with a hard-core supporter of Farage. The individual concerned claimed that the EU had never had its accounts signed off, a claim on the part of the Leave Campaign that is actually very easy to disprove with a simple Google search. No matter what I said or what evidence I presented, this individual simply would not accept the reality of the situation. The EU’s accounts have been signed off every year it has been in existence.

This is typical of the false beliefs about the EU held by many Leave voters. People in the Rejoin movement talk about ignorance and dishonesty of Leave voters, and whilst this may ring true, one needs to remember that ultimately the problem is with those who lied.

Such deeply held entrenched beliefs did not just happen or come about in the relatively short space of time of the referendum campaign in 2016 itself. In many ways they remind me of the belief’s individuals hold about Brands which are the product of planned and sustained campaigns on the part of brand owners to implant a particular perception of their products in the minds of consumers.

Such deeply held false beliefs about the EU can only have come about as a product of a deliberately and sustained campaign to discredit the EU using falsehood over a substantial period of time.

Starmer’s decision to chase the Ref Wall vote and allow Brexit to stand therefore has serious consequences for the quality of our democracy, indeed the very future of democracy in the UK. It sends a message to individuals and organisations that deliberately misleading the electorate in this way is acceptable in the UK.

Starmer therefore needs to show leadership and challenge that dishonesty for the sake of democracy itself. And that is without even considering the issue of the serious breaches of both data protection and electoral laws committed by the Leave Campaign for which it was heavily fined.

There is however a further reason why Starmer should address this issue which is the subject of some of those lies, specifically immigrants and immigration from the EU, which is often cited as the main issue that caused Red Wall voters to vote leave.

The Leave campaign made all sorts of allegations about EU immigrants and immigration such as a reduction in income, stealing jobs from British people and overwhelming public services such as the NHS.

These claims are false.

Study after study has shown little if any impact on wage levels caused by EU immigration, in fact the only authoritative study I have seen on the issue showing a reduction in income concluded that there was a reduction of just a few pennies, and even then, only in some industries not all. The claims of the Leave Campaign were inconsistent on the issue of stealing jobs with the famous Schrődinger’s immigrant simultaneously stealing jobs and claiming benefits whilst also telling us we had record levels of employment. Various studies have also shown that rather than overwhelming public services, EU immigrants actually contribute more in taxes than they take out in the form of services and benefits to the tune of several thousands of pounds each year.

When challenged over these false and misleading claims, leavers prove to be just as stubborn and often claim that they are based on common sense – if an immigrant is in the UK, they must be stealing a British person’s job. Not only does this show a lack of knowledge of the manpower shortages faced by the UK economy, it is also difficult to understand why they hold such beliefs when many Red Wall areas such as the South Wales Valleys have very few immigrants, EU or otherwise.

These claims raise two further issues that need addressing by Starmer, and indeed in the case of the first issue, by the wider UK society as this is where many of the allegations of racism on the part of leave voters arise.

EU immigrants were and are still being blamed for issues, not because they are responsible but simply because they are immigrants. That is racist and needs to be addressed no matter how uncomfortable it is for Starmer and the Labour party.

Secondly, whilst the cause of the long-term structural problems linked to industrial decline faced in many Red Wall areas is debatable and could include issues such as Thatcher’s monetarism of the early 1980’s, privatisation, militant trade unionism, lack of investment, the nationalisation of much of our heavy industry, or in the case of the coal industry, the longer term need to protect the environment, such problems were not caused by immigration or immigrants. Stopping Freedom of Movement by leaving the EU will therefore not solve the problems.

Furthermore, the desire expressed to rebuild the UK industrial base now that we have left the EU expressed by many in the Labour Party who supported Brexit is flying in flying in the face of the reality of the 4th Industrial Revolution with its digitisation and automation. Mass employment in manufacturing will soon be a thing of the past and the financial realities of the huge sums needed for automation make investment in a small British economy disconnected from the EU unrealistic.

Furthermore, the captive markets of the British Empire that our industrial base once relied upon for customers will not be coming back, indeed many of the countries that made up the British Empire are now emerging as economic powers themselves eager to export the products of their own manufacturing industry. India for example is growing in economic strength and given its size and democratic nature will no doubt become a leading economic superpower, perhaps even the leading economic superpower.

Leaving the EU will therefore do nothing to address the structural issues faced by Red Wall voters which are the ultimate cause of their dissatisfaction.
Starmer’s vote chasing with its implicit failure to show leadership on this issue of our EU membership will therefore not only result in alienating remain voters but will almost certainly also alienate Red Wall voters further. And, of course, waiting in the wings to exploit that alienation is Farage with his hate filled right wing populism.

Starmer needs to show leadership and act. He needs to face up to the issue of the lies of the Leave Campaign and lead Red Wall voters rather than just chase their votes.

Rejoining the European Union – A Statement by Colin Gordon

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We wish to state that we are not “getting behind” Brexit.

Brexit has taken place and we are now experiencing the consequences. We must all in the coming period work together to do the best for our country by limiting, mitigating and repairing the immediate damage which Brexit is now inflicting on us. However we have no intention of consenting to lock ourselves indefinitely into a diminished future, or the permanent and pointless reduction of our shared possibilities resulting from the historic error which our nation has unfortunately been misled into committing.

As a pro-European movement we therefore declare our intention to campaign for the re-entry of the United Kingdom (or its legacy political entities) into the European Union at the earliest practicable opportunity. The timeline and phases of this campaign cannot now be precisely stated and will be determined by democratic attention to the state of public opinion and by the evolving situation, including of course the corresponding wishes and willingness our European neighbours. At this time we believe that the target should be to achieve re-entry by 2030.

Whatever the time, work and change that may be needed to achieve this goal, we declare unequivocally and as of now that an early re-entry of the UK to the EU is in our overwhelming national interest, as well as in the wider international interests of peace, justice and democracy. Along with all others who share this conviction, we commit ourselves with immediate effect to begin preparing the ground and creating the conditions for a democratic return of the UK to a path to a better future in a full and constructive partnership with its neighbours and allies in the EU, for the benefit of all its peoples.