Category: Borders

Cross Party Alliances

Updated on

18/06/2021 by author

Paul Bowers, our parliamentary lobbyist has produced an excellent letter to promote All-Party Parliamentary action on the EU which we may customise (attached).

We seek to target wobbling Tories as a first tranche and, of course, opposition parties.

Please go to the Google sheet and populate the sheet with details of relevant MPs and add your name if you plan to write to your MP.

Here is the letter to customise:

[Name] MP

House of Commons

London

SW1A 0AA

Dear [MP]

All-Party Parliamentary Group on European Union

I am writing as a constituent to ask you to consider setting up an All-Party Parliamentary Group on the European Union.

[I am a member of {name of activist group}]. I voted Remain in the 2016 referendum, and I have campaigned on the issue ever since.

[Insert personal connection here – In addition, my husband is Estonian; I have fond memories of studying at the Sorbonne; I once ate a croissant … ]

As you know, leaving the EU has damaged the UK’s fishing communities, threatens our farmers and food security, has cost eye-watering sums for financial services, harmed our creative industries, and forced many exporters either to scale down or to relocate. The Government’s encouragement of relocation is as much an admission of failed policy as are its plans to support retraining for farmers. Brexit has also damaged UK democracy, reduced our standing in the world, stigmatised EU nationals, and divided our country.

I believe that membership of the European Union is a necessity for the UK.

However, the response of the major political parties to the result of the 2019 general election risks creating a vicious circle of despair. Many voters wish to rejoin the EU, but feel that this is not possible because politicians are not showing leadership to that end. They feel politically homeless.

If no voice in Parliament even addresses the damage of our loss of membership, nor points out the opportunities presented by new developments within the EU, such as the growth of the green and digital sectors from the ambitious NextGenerationEU recovery and transformation plan, we will not be in a position to take advantage promptly of any opportunity to promote membership that might arise.

According to the APPG Register of 2 June 2021, there are Groups on individual European countries, on Erasmus and on Reuniting Britain Post-Brexit, but not on the EU itself.

As you may know, Article 11 of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement provides that the European Parliament and the UK Parliament may establish a Parliamentary Partnership Assembly “to exchange views on the partnership.”

In its Resolution 2021/2658(RSP) of 28 April 2021, the European Parliament endorsed this, envisaging an Assembly which would monitor implementation of the TCA, and suggesting that its remit include “the right to submit recommendations for areas where improved cooperation could be beneficial for both parties and to take joint initiatives to promote close relations.”

An APPG could support this work, and undertake a number of other roles:

Raising awareness of the damage caused by Brexit and the broken promises of Brexiteers
Channelling constituents’ views on policies that might reconcile them to EU membership
Creating a basis for lobbying within your own party in an effort to shift the leadership towards Rejoin
Representing the experiences of EU national constituents and their children
Providing scrutiny of the TCA, now that the Government has abolished the Commons Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union
Commissioning research, providing spokespeople to the media and promoting an informed view of the EU, life outside, and the accession process
Providing a conduit to Parliament, through external membership, for informed activists
Contacting the Conference on the Future of Europe to discuss reforms that might help reconcile UK voters to a future return, and to stay in touch with new developments in the EU

I hope you will consider this suggestion positively, and speak to other Members about the possibility of creating an APPG on the EU. The longer we go on without one, the more glaring the omission, and the harder it will be for politicians to break the silence on this most vital of issues.

Yours sincerely,

[Name]

[Address]

Posted in Borders, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Britastrophe, Corona, Europe, Politics, Sovereignty | 3 Replies

Reasons to Rejoin

Updated on

08/06/2021 by author

Peter Cook

Please join us in Chesham/Amersham this weekend to support The Rejoin EU Party from 10 am each day and tbc Batley and Spen. The economic reasons to rejoin the EU are now so widely published, given the disasters that have unfolded for so many industries since Brexit day (the fishing industry, the farming industry, the finance industry, the entertainment industry, the list goes on!) that I do feel that for many of us on the Rejoin EU side of the argument it’s become low hanging fruit.

But let’s remind ourselves there are so many more reasons to be part of the European Union than the economic ones.

The EU has been the biggest and most successful peace project in history, taking a continent that has an almost non-stop history of war for two-and-a-half millenia and forging an unprecedented peace. Some will argue that this is a product of a higher level of civilisation we have now reached, and it would be simply unthinkable to go back to our warlike roots. But when you consider the speed with which Britain despatched its warships to a protest by small fishing boats recently, you have to wonder.

People of my generation (mid 50s) were also able to take advantage of educational, cultural and lifestyle choices within the EU unrivalled by any other generation in history. The Erasmus scheme (which the current government spitefully chose to jettison, even though we could have continued whilst being outside the EU) opened the door for hundreds of thousands of UK young people to travel the continent. Many of whom chose to go on and base their lives within the city of their choice only to have it cruelly ripped away from them with Brexit.

As for the UK itself, it now finds itself in an existential crisis with the future of Scotland and Northern Ireland more uncertain than at any point in recent history.

And then there’s the science projects, the global environmental activism, the protection of food standards, the safeguards on dignity of lifestyle for those of us in the LGBTIQA+ community. All gone in a heartbeat, with total power over all our lives now in the hands of a hard right government with no obvious moral values (and I certainly don’t need to remind anyone where that can lead to).

So, to a question I often find myself turning to these days : “where is the opposition to this”?

When I was persuaded that establishing the Rejoin EU party as a registered political party as well as a pressure group was appropriate, I thought we’d spend more time supporting other opposition parties and their candidates then standing ourselves. We are pledged to provide a rejoin EU voice in any by election where one doesn’t otherwise exist.

In Scotland, that means very little work on our part. With the Scottish Greens and the SNP unashamedly arguing for our return to the top table, all our party has to do is be as supportive as possible.

Sadly, we don’t have the same options in English by elections. The Labour Party are calling on us to “embrace Brexit”, the Liberal Democrats have a leader who’s stated they are “not a rejoin party” and shows no sign of retracting this statement, whilst the Lib Dem conference supports only a “long term aim” of rejoining the EU (i.e. WON’T be giving voters that choice in the next general election) and the Green Party limit their discussions to rejoining the customs union.

Whilst many firm pro-EU advocates within these parties are trying hard to get stronger commitments, the collective narrative that “Brexit is done” becomes harder and harder to shift. Which is why we are lucky to have two amazing candidates in Brendan Donnelly for Chesham & Amersham and Andrew Smith for Batley & Spen in the upcoming by elections.

And even if, as Private Eye have phrased it so eloquently in the past, we end up as the only folks “sitting on the fruit cake stall” whilst the political mainstream ignore the issue so be it. I regularly ask myself, am I just crazy being the only one who can’t see the benefits of Brexit? Perhaps it’s part of the arrogance that comes with being a middle aged white dude, but in this instance, to quote Lily Allen, : “it’s not me, it’s you”.

Richard Hewison

Leader of Rejoin EU Party

www.TheRejoinEUParty.com