Category: Uncategorized

EU27 citizens denied a vote

Letter sent to our local paper

This issue should not be quietly dropped. Please write to your MPs and local papers. We need answers as to why this happened.

This is the text of my letter sent today.

I was infuriated to see the hashtag #deniedmyvote trending on EU Election Day last week.  It seems that 10s of thousands of EU27 citizens, maybe more,  in the UK were denied their vote here either because of lack of timely information from councils around the country or incorrect processing of the silly over bureaucratic second form imposed by the British government in the electoral process.  Meanwhile many British voters in the EU who wanted to vote in their home country rather than their country of residence did not receive their postal votes in time.  Thankfully it seems that Chester council seems to have been well organised and responsive and Chester for Europe ran a campaign to try and get information out.  Other North West councils may not have performed so well as we are hearing reports of affected voters there and we don’t know how many people had “red lines” put through their names at the polling station.  This is really the ultimate metaphor of Brexit which was like drawing a line through the names of our EU27 family and friends as if they did not matter.  Ignored and used and insulted by the Government and the brexit architects, the EU elections were a chance for their voices to be heard.  To lose their vote is beyond disgusting in a modern democracy.  This is very troubling and not an issue for shrugging shoulders. I ask you this, who will be the next group of people to be denied their right to vote, will it be you  and who will defend and stand up for you in that instance? I hope the public will demand some answers from our politicians.  How did this happen, how many people around the country were affected and what is to be done about it? 

The 3million group are taking legal action on this matter and anybody affected should contact them with their experience. 

What did Europe ever do for EU

As I discussed in my last blog, many who voted leave did so because they had no real idea what the EU does and had been fed a negative diatriabe of excuses and lies from several directions in the last few years before the referendum. For millions of us, however, the awareness of the benefit of the EU was there, maybe in the background, maybe taken for granted, but it was there and the x by remain was every bit as much an instinctive emotional response to the question as is claimed leavers had, because we had had some direct experience in some shape or form with the EU.

For me there were many clear benefits I could see but Ι want to share a small and simple story which illustrates how just looking at EU membership fees is an oversimplistic way of counting the cost/benefit of the EU.

In 2000 we had moved to a rural area of Wales and set up a little micro business working from what was a larder in the house, to all intents and purposes it was a cupboard under the stairs. We had very little cash available. We had only the income we could generate for ourselves from our own efforts in our mail order business. We claimed no benefits and we relied on nobody but ourselves. We took no holidays except bank holidays. We had dial up internet which was very slow. As we went on making a reasonable living we grasped the nettle of creating our own website but we could feel the limits of our internet access with regards to efficiency over the next couple of years, we were being held back.

The IT revolution was in full flow throughout the world of business. It was to change every single part of the way business was run. It was also to open up massive opportunities for SMEs and we wanted to tap into that. But there was already an inequality coming from the poor and non existent service available in rural areas. Internet infrastructure was being built and improved piecemeal by the private sector, understandably priority was being given to the big cities and the areas where population was higher and people could afford the service. In practice Wales was a million miles behind England in providing an adequate service fit for the industrial world of the new millennium.

We did our research and discovered that we could put in a satellite internet service which would give us, for the time, good access to speedy internet. This would help us enormously but we had no spare money to invest in this. So we applied for a tiny grant which had become available from the WDA as was. This fund was available because Wales received funding from the EU in addition to funding from Westminster which could then be used in projects for the benefit of business development. This grant of a few hundred pounds may sound like peanuts but to us it was a really big deal and gave us the ability to keep up with our competitors and access new technology. Our customers were based all over the UK and we were really only able to do this because of technology.

This article from 2002 discusses the general problem of internet infrastructure and the bigger project that followed over the next few years to try and bring Wales up to date. Though it took some years the money was made available thanks to the EU and to Westminster. Would Westminster alone have ever provided enough money for Wales to do this? I don’t believe it would have done, if they really cared about business in the regions, this would have been a top national priority.

This was literally the only grant we have ever applied for in our business lives. The timing was perfect and it was just enough to give us a step up and be able to compete effectively. We could reach our marketplaces more efficiently and it opened up some new opportunities. We could create and manage a better website. All tasks on data analysis and accounts became a little bit easier and quicker and we had much better quality information we could base business decisions on. We grew our business and took some offices in the neighbouring town and started hiring people.

So one little grant in a scheme available partly thanks to EU funds

Led to renting of an office which represents spending in the local business community

Led to Business rates being paid on the office which benefits the local community

Led to employment of some local people

Led to PAYE and NI going to the exchequer

Led to income earned by staff to be spent in the local economy

Led to VAT collected in increased sales made throughout the UK

Led to income from us personally and our business being spent in the local economy

Led to access to cash to invest further in the business which led to growth which led to more employment

Led to corporation tax paid on profits of the company

Led to increased expenditure with our suppliers, all of who’s communities then benefit from all the points above.

Incidentally later, many years later, we grew sufficiently to tap into overseas sales and diversify thanks to the single market at a time when our domestic market was stagnant and unprofitable due to the effect of austerity on our customers. This saved our jobs and our company and our growth and our tax contributions.

My daily 12 pence or whatever it costs me for EU membership is absolutely nothing compared to what I and my community gained from a tiny door that was opened to us.

This calculator lets you figure out the cost of EU membership to you then if you can’t think of personal benefits you have enjoyed, have a look at this app, it will jog your memory. Then share these with everyone who asks with scorn “what has the EU ever done for me”.

Most importantly get yourselves and EVERYBODY you know down to that polling station on Thursday and vote for party which has a positive commitment to our future where we belong as members of the biggest most successful partnership of nations in the world. If the EU did not exist we would want to invent it.

Word cloud image courtesy of @spaceangel1964

Where Have We Been

I watched the excellent hustings for the upcoming EU elections organised by my local pro EU group Chester for Europe in conjunction with Weaver Vale for EU and Eddisbury for EU. It was very interesting and I will probably write and tweet about the detail but as I watched I was dumbfounded to find the most thought provoking and powerful point for me came from the Conservative candidate taking part Sajjad Karim. The panel were asked what question they would pose in the hustings and he had interpreted it as a question to the audience and he said “Where have you been?”. He was of course, referring to the low turnout and lack of interest in the elections of previous years where he and the other pro EU candidates had to face rooms full of angry faragist/ukip/far right types. The anti EU crowd had been whipped up by their leaders who had spotted the public disinterest and saw the MEP route as a neat way to win political power because Westminster politics was not proving easy to conquer for their second rate politicians.

So where were we? Why did we leave a massive vacuum ready to be filled by these wannabe despots who’s tools of the trade are generating hate and anger in their followers. Farage knew what he was selling when he stood in front off that hateful poster – a nod and a wink to the racist tendencies of his target customers. He knew the groundwork had been laid already by the years of headlines and insane stories about Brussels and immigrants and refugees. The language had been carefully cultivated for so long. Gravy trains, being “ruled” by Eurocrats, regulation being “forced” on us, immigrants coming here versus expats going there, stories about bendy bananas, floor cleaner motors and lightbulbs.

Even austerity played into their hands. The worldwide financial crisis in 2008, a complex set of events, triggered across the Atlantic was boiled down and dressed up purely as frivolous overspend by the outgoing Labour government. Do you remember, we were told there were hard choices to make and we were all in it together? Suddenly there was major concern whipped up about the amount of money spent by benefits claimants. Newspaper headlines bore this perception out, printing stories about benefits cheats with lots of children, getting huge houses and spending all day being driven around in taxis whilst smoking. On TV we were subjected to poverty porn. The people inclined to the right could be outraged at the perceived fecklessness and the people inclined to the left could be outraged at the outrage of those at the right. Complex pictures of individual stories were boiled down once again into a simple binary judgement.

Some of these TV programs showed the unfortunate victims of bad housing policies by government angrily spitting at the camera about how foreigners were treated better than “our people”. A view not really challenged by the program makers directly, they would probably say it wasn’t that kind of programme. But new documentaries appeared depicting Eastern Europeans exercising their treaty rights to freedom of movement in a negative and stereotypical light mainly. Newspaper headlines pilloried Eastern Europeans and covered the refugee crisis in 2015 in the most inhuman way and crucially conflating the two issues.

The conditions were perfect. The scene was set. The shit was rolling downhill nicely. Politicians blamed the the tax paying public, who blamed the low paid public and then in the final scene before the referendum all of them blamed the weakest group, the UK residents with no vote, no political voice, working hard, paying their taxes but with no political representation.

Not only were conditions perfect for the referendum, but there was no more time to lose for the wreckers. Within another generation the majority of voters would be younger people more likely to be pro EU, being an EU citizen was as natural to them as breathing, something they took for granted. This generation don’t get their news from the tabloid papers. Thanks to work done by Labour in the 90s and noughties, they are more likely to have gone to college, so unaffected by the tabloid hate of the EU and having been educated in a more diverse environment they are far more likely to enjoy, approve of and stick with their EU citizenship.

All this time it’s true though, we were absent, we were shockingly ignorant of the in-depth workings of the EU. We took our rights for granted. We thought good sense would prevail. But with a good dose of lawbreaking and cheating along the way Leave stoked the fire of division and spoke to the dark side of people’s natures where they take no care to examine nuance and want to accept simple explanations because that’s easier than thinking or because their lives are pretty miserable anyway so they have little to lose. The architects got this toxic brexit and its associated chaos and hate filled disruption of vital Parliamentary work on things to improve the lives of the people over the line.

At the moment all I am hearing is politicians of all parties telling us it’s the fault of those of us with liberal values that we are where we are. When the ugly discussions about immigration started if we tried to point out the illogical and sometimes immoral position of those spouting anti immigration views we are told we should address peoples “legitimate views” time and again. We had years of the cries “we can’t talk about immigration” when we talked about nothing but. Are the politicians right? Was it my fault when it is they who have refused to tell people the truth? Should I have challenged every single little bit of casual racism or poverty bashing or EU bashing in my life? Well I think there is something in that and I will put my hand up to my share of responsibility on this point. Frankly though we don’t want to go around in our lives having arguments with strangers we meet who are spouting rubbish – thats what twitter is for, but we can influence those around us to grow up with responsible views stemming from critical thinking, in particular our children and families. I am proud to say I have played my part in that kind of intervention at least.

Taking our EU membership for granted is also something that i put my hand up to. Lack of proper engagement at previous EU elections for example, not informing myself more thoroughly was all a huge mistake and when I came to campaign in the 2016 referendum I could have been more effective if I had known even a fraction of what I know now. All this is on me and whether you shoulder a share of that responsibility yourselves is for you to decide.

At the same time let’s not get carried away with the gaslighting that seems to have become the way politicians deal with everything nowadays. The biggest fattest failure is that of those who we actually pay to sit in Westminster, those who represent us and make the legislation that has led us to where we are now. Sajjad Karim was right to ask the question “where were you” but actually the question should have been directed to his own party and the other parties in Westminster who have indulged and appeased the extreme right and used the EU as a convenient body to blame for their own policy failures. Even local authorities and local politicians have used the “it ain’t us guv its the EU innit” time and again. The phrase health and safety gone mad was seized on so local politicians could shrug their shoulders instead of explaining honestly and precisely why certain things are done or decided.

Where were these politicians with their clear explanations of what was being done in the name of country in the EU. I do not blame our excellent committed hard working European MEPs for a moment. They have been used and abused and ignored by their own parties particularly since 2010. I have no idea why they are even loyal to the big two parties. Because Westminster does not want to talk about the excellent work the EU does, or put it another way, the excellent work WE do with our partners in the EU, the press therefore aren’t interested.

The only party which ever puts their MEPs up on our screens is the Farage Circus, old UKIP and his latest creation, an empty hole of nothing but slogans and negativity. Even the BNP were given a platform on Question Time a few years ago. If our pro EU MEPs are not appearing on Newsnight or the 6 o’clock news regularly then why on earth would the public develop any interest in what is going on in Brussels. It becomes a black box to them, only vaguely aware that it does important stuff that affects us in the background. So when the great British public was asked to pronounce judgement on it, they only had 40 years of EU hate, negative or no coverage and no meaningful information or knowledge about what the EU is or how it works or what our MEPs do or why our right to Freedom of Movement, for example, is a terrific privilege for all of us as individuals .

If we fail to stop brexit, we are being told it will be our fault for not voting for this party or that party or splitting the vote or whatever. But you know we are doing our very best to turn back against 20 years of negative programming and powerful forces. If we fail to stop brexit it won’t be because I didn’t vote for Labour or Tory or Greens or Lib Dem or Change UK MEPS. It will be because parties and parliamentary politicians have failed us consistently in the last two years and its time they stopped blaming voters who didn’t vote leave or will not vote leave in a #finalsay referendum and looked at themselves in the mirror. What can Remain Politicians do to stop brexit? Well they can put their party aside for now and fight for a #peoplesvote and if their party won’t fight for that then they should be prepared to work with other remain parties and find a strategy which will help us. Stop blaming us and start helping us. I see the chances are diminishing of that so we are left with tactical voting in the EU elections. It’s the only thing we as Remainers can do to make sure our vote is not counted as one for a brexit party.

My parting note connected to this is on Labour. I am sorry to single them out but why are they messing about? Brexit fans will vote for the Brexit party. Why are Labour courting their vote. Remove the qualification from a confirmatory vote and Labour will find a world of delight opens up in the polls as those remainers normally inclined to vote for them heave a sigh of relief and put their x by their party on the ballot paper. Why are they producing ads and videos about bobbies on the beat for EU elections, WTAF is that all about? Labour are not trusted at the moment in remain circles given the size of the flipping table and all the options labour refuse to remove off it once and for all and they will keep bumping along with abysmal polling numbers until they earn remain trust.

Politicians, put your houses in order. We may well have to accept some responsibility for being absent in years gone by, for being passive or blind, but believe me we are paying attention now, we are present and we will bring about political change in the future so you can never divide people like this again.

Our Voting Quandary

Why would we vote for an MEP who’s stated party aim is to brexit? I am not just talking about the the two flavours of ukip. We all know what their game is. Namely, get their people in, spread hate, don’t do any work, fiddle their expenses, be a thorn in the side of the rest of the European Parliament who are there to do serious work for the benefit of the EU citizens they represent and basically con the European public (including us) out of the money which pays their salaries and pensions with no intention of doing a tap of work. They are a cheap sham, a con. No policy. Just a mishmash of also-rans and faded unsavouries seeking their 15 minutes of fame as candidates. I have nothing but contempt for them and if you have seen some of the people standing for them you will be equally contemptuous.

But looking at the other parties, well, the conservatives are the party of government. They want us out of the EU. So that’s a non starter too. What of the others? Well if the party manifesto contains the words “we respect the referendum” with no crystal clear commitment to a confirmatory vote and a remain option, is it relevant whether the candidates on their lists are personally strongly committed to the EU? Because of the D’Hondt system we can’t select particular candidates to back so party policy is the only thing we can go on initially. This is what we need to get our heads around and why we need to figure out a strategy. If the stated party policy priority is to make us brexit even under some imaginary soft brexit additions to May’s deal as yet not agreed, explained or described, despite the overwhelming evidence stacked up about cheating and damage to ordinary people, pro EU candidates and the party supporters who believe in the EU will be undermined. They must apply pressure to remove the Eurosceptic flavour of their party’s campaign.

The Remain community – now representing a growing majority, (see the poll of polls) are listening hard to what parties are saying and they will be harsh critics because they have been let down time and again by politicians and parties, the patience is incredibly fragile now. I know many of us are biding our time before we decide how we will vote.

For me, a half hearted approach to the EU elections also undermines the position of the UK as a force in the European Parliament. A missing commitment to remain or People’s Vote will inevitably raise questions from the rest of the EU as to whether the UK will ever be trusted not to dangle another sword of Damocles over its own head again at the expense and disruption of its EU parliament and the return of UKIP MkI and MkII MEPs will have the rest of the sensible parts of the European Parliament facepalming for 5 years. How can we trust what our MEPS will do to build and improve the EU if their party is trying to keep their direction constantly eurosceptic.

I admit I struggle with all this. It’s the hardest thing we have had to negotiate in our long campaign because we are fighting on two fronts, against what British Party Politics does by nature in the way parties compete with each-other and refuse to cooperate, whilst trying to lobby for a peoples vote and ultimately a remain outcome .

But the leaked Labour EU election leaflet drafts this week are the worst example I have yet seen of a supposedly non EU-hostile party completely missing the point. The EU Elections are about Europe. There is barely an acknowledgement that this is anything to do with the European Parliament. .

There is no vision in this work as to what Europe wide initiatives their party will support or drive or how they can help shape our future with regards to the environment, citizen protections, freedoms and economic cooperation with our partners. It’s almost as if whoever has written it has no idea what the EP does, or what the EU does. Which is tragic, given Labour have such wonderful Europeans standing for them. Julie Ward, Seb Dance, Richard Corbett, Theresa Griffin, Wajid Khan – all successful MEPs who have been doing their jobs representing us in the EP and, since the referendum, have been strong peoples vote campaigners ready to stand up for our future in the EU and be positive about all those things we value. Peace, freedom of movement, protection, cooperation.

These proposed leaflets are simply the same old tired dumbing down of a politics concentrated on dividing and labelling and slagging off the other side, encouraging negative voting, encouraging a protest vote. It’s depressing and parochial and lacks vision and undermines their forward thinking MEPS who we, in the remain community, consider our own regardless of party. It says ‘vote for us and forget the EU’ or ‘vote for us to tell the government you are angry’. Aren’t we in enough trouble already with that mindset? When are politicians going to stop encouraging protest votes and start leading?

I for one want to vote for parties who can demonstrate to me both their commitment to remain as EU members and also their European supporting credentials, believing that the most successful trading and political bloc in the world is a force for good in the lives of ordinary people across our beautiful continent. We may have lots of problems in Europe, there will always be problems, but we can best solve them together with cooperation and friendship and partnership. I want to return MEPs committed to our future in the EU who aren’t hampered by a party leadership which seeks to undermine them.

This criteria equally applies in my deliberations as to whether I will vote for Labour or any of the other parties. I cannot consider Labour unless they resolve their internal conflict and are unequivocal about a People’s Vote. I note as I write this the news that these shameful leaflet designs are thankfully being binned. They “forgot” to include mention of a confirmatory vote. Of course they did! (Sarcastic font). It’s a start but the clock is ticking and Labour needs to listen carefully to its members and supporters and potential supporters who are, right now, busy writing to everyone they can think of in Labour to make their views heard if they are going to be in the running for success.

I do understand the quandary of labour voters who want to remain but want to vote for their party. All I can ask is that you make it absolutely clear that you want them to support remain or that you find a way to put it on record that you are supporting the great MEPs on the list in your region and not the abysmal front bench negative attitude to the EU. We do not want Pro EU votes to be counted by others as anti EU votes as per the 2017 election narrative employed so damagingly by May, Farage et al.

So I will continue to support voter registration and turnout campaigns and I look forward to seeing the details of the Lib Dem, Green Party, ChUK and Labour manifestos so I can make my choices about who to vote for in the North West in an informed way. You can forget trying to bully me or guilt me. A vote for the Lib Dem’s or greens or TIG is not a vote for tories. That’s just nonsense. I will be keeping an eye on the information and data being analysed by remainvoter about my region because tactical voting is still on my mind as a way to go. You see, the Labour Party aren’t the only ones who are able to keep options on the table 😉.

Don’t Panic

EU Election Blues

Here are some truths.

1  The Remain Parties may or may not be able to work together. There are official rules that stop some types of cooperation and there is not a huge amount of time for the parties to get a grip and come to some agreements on other ways of working together.

2  We have little control of whether parties can work together. Party tribalism has played a massive part in this mess we are now in. It hasn’t just disappeared overnight, and we can’t pretend it has. The raison d’être of political parties is to get seats so they can deliver their policies.

3  We need MEPs who will take their responsibilities seriously in looking after our interests as EU citizens and not be trying to take us out of the EU against our will.

4  We are going into these elections hanging onto our EU citizenship by the skin of our teeth. The forces that want us to leave are still there, whether by action or inaction from Westminster parliament.

It’s not surprising therefore, that we are struggling to work out what is best to do given these facts,  but there is no need for us to panic or beat ourselves or, more importantly, each other up. Every step of this journey we have taken together has been uncharted territory, a maze of strategies and options and we haven’t always gone the right way at first and sometimes people have taken different branches, but somehow, most of us  always backtrack the blind alleys and we find ourselves here, together, still with the same end goal in mind, to retain our EU citizenship.  We also have a far greater sense of why the European Parliament is important and why we need to fill it with representatives committed to the European Project, it’s development, it’s success and the rights and benefits for the ordinary citizens of its members which it protects. If we need to take a little time and a little investigation and a little debate as to how we can best support those two things , that’s okay.

We saw Ukip Mk II  getting wall to wall coverage and we saw old now more extreme Ukip  being given a platform over the course of a weekend and we had a scary poll thrown at us and we all panicked, me included. But it’s just one poll and only time will show us whether we are to be concerned. We saw UKIP extreme being challenged on the BBC and one wonders if that was simply to make UKIP Mk II look less extreme. But they are both deeply negative parties, they have no positive policies, only to hate and shout and be angry and leave, quit, give up slam the door in a tantrum and leave the building. Let’s concentrate on continuing to shine a light on their negativity versus our positivity because we don’t quit.

I must address some big Remain twitter accounts, sorry if you aren’t on twitter it will only take a moment. PLEASE PLEASE STOP talking to us as if we are idiots or as if you know best all the time and we know nothing. We need to have strategy discussions without being told we are rubbish. There is no one remain party or organisation. When you talk about the remain campaign, you are talking about us the thousands of activists who spend our free time working towards a People’s Vote. We don’t ask for much because we just get on with it but a little respect and humility instead of a barrage of negativity wouldn’t go amiss because it’s us doing the heavy lifting up and down the country. If you mean politicians talk about the politicians but they are not the heart of Remain. We are.

So back to our dilemma, what to do immediately? Well let’s do what we have the most control over first. Our regional activists and other campaign groups have already recognised and got plans underway for their street campaigns to encourage voter registration and turn out. We need to get accurate information out to EU27 citizens about their right to vote and how to register and a concerted effort to motivate under 34s to register and vote. If we can get a massive chunk of Remain supporters out and voting in an election who previously didn’t bother, that on its own will help us immensely.  Support these groups, these initiatives designed to these ends, we don’t have to tell them how to vote, just get them to consider the manifestos and vote because if nobody votes that sends a poor signal out.

Labour, this is my plea to you.  If you are to put forward your excellent MEPS who do fully support the future of the European Project, you can only undermine them if your manifesto is not clearly in support of Remain or the very least a People’s Vote. You cannot have clear EU policies for the European Parliament if you are thinking you are going to leave. It’s a contradiction in terms, this is what you need to get your heads around.

The smaller Remain parties we understand you are good Europeans; we know you want the European Parliament to be a success, but you will all be out anyway if we cannot stop Brexit, so please do whatever you can to cooperate with each other with this in mind.

As to strategy, let’s be prepared to take a flexible approach in the next few weeks, as we see the manifestos and any commitments to cooperate between parties. We may well need tactical voting, we should not rule it out, so we need to watch the polls, collect the data carefully and, on our streets, stalls we need to listen to feedback from our visitors and report it back.  As all this information comes in the best strategy may become obvious.

So in brief do this.

Support voter registration and turnout initiatives
Get everyone in your sphere of influence in the mindset to vote.
Write to parties to ask them to find a way to cooperate if they can.
Put pressure on Labour to put forward a clear manifesto
Stop arguing.
Stop constantly demotivating tired grass-roots campaigners.
AND Stop panicking.

The March in March and What’s Next.

The March 

Exactly 3 weeks ago today, I took great pride in taking part in the biggest march ever in the UK which was all about demanding a Peoples Vote on Brexit.  We came from all corners of the UK and from across elsewhere in the EU. I interrupted my own Cyprus sojourn to fly out to London to play my part in history. 

Walking around London early on Saturday morning, we peeled our eyes for the tell-tale EU flags and t-shirts and  fretted a little about whether it would be a bigger march than the October remain march but of course at that time many of the coaches were still on the road.  I made a point of visiting my Final Say for All friends first who promptly thrust a plastic cup of delicious Pimms in our hands, it was a little early but, well, you must be polite about these things.  

Then I went on to meet my Chester friends who had set off on coaches at 6.30am.  We met on Oxford Street at 11.30am and walked together down to Park Lane.  A conga line of banners and excited chatter, there were maybe 300 of us.

As we plunged into an ocean of faces, a vibrant mass of blue with yellow jewels twinkling, a plethora of banners and placards bearing messages from the hilarious to the incandescent (though being Remain, unfailingly polite rage), my earlier worries slipped easily away.  It was BIG.  We merged into the crowd and then we stopped  Here we stood for at least 2 hours.  Some of our group treated us to some singing and music.  We chatted together and made new friends with those around who stood with us.  From time to time we would move a little, but it was due to small groups slipping out of the crowd and crossing Hyde Park to try and get into the route further ahead. 

The media helicopter flew over several times. You may well have seen the YouTube footage condensed down to 90seconds.  Our feet ached but still the smiles and laughter prevailed.  It felt good to be part of this movement.  For the last two years our Remain community has sometimes experienced some disagreements particularly the online campaigners, stemming mostly from the use of different tactics and varied priorities of all the different grass roots groups and the high-profile organisers.  But on that day these differences were trifles, forgotten, squabbles laid to one side.  We were focused on delivering, by our very massive presence the following messages to parliament, to the country and to the EU.

We want to remain EU citizens

We were all lied to by the Leave Campaigns

We stand by our EU27 families and friends and will stop them being treated as second class citizens

We demand an opportunity for all to compare the reality of leave against our EU citizenship and we must be allowed to vote on which we want.

We are all losers in Brexit, a game designed by billionaires and, ideologues and narcissists greedy for power and money at the expense of the ordinary citizens.

Eventually we were able to shuffle along.  As the marchers ebbed and flowed it was quite difficult to keep our banners together.  In a crowd that size it is difficult to keep more than half a dozen people together all the time and we were constantly speeding up and slowing down to reconvene by our banners as we lost and found each other.  Old friends emerged from the crowds to surprise us.  It seemed a minor miracle for me to bump into my friend from Elspeth in the massive crowd.  We made slow progress, unable to access social media we hoped our friends at home were keeping our march trending for us. 

At 4.40pm we came within distant sight of the first big screen near the National Gallery.  We were on Pall Mall.  Our coach people had to leave as some tube stations were closed due to the crowds so they would have a longer journey back,  so we stepped out of the march at this point to send them in the right direction. We hadn’t seen a single speech, but we were elated to realise the scale of the event and the scale of our achievement.  We all did that together.  We stood and watched for a while.  A huge group of young people were playing music and dancing, looking as fresh and energetic as if they had only just started the party.
As we headed back the way we had come in search of seating, food and drink we came upon the end of the march, the police vans at the back just around the corner of St James Street on Pall Mall.  The time was 5.03pm.  We had indeed been marching for 5 hours.



SO, WHAT NEXT

Here we are, 3 weeks later, and we have celebrated not 1 but 2  no-Brexit days.  We hang on to our EU citizenship by the skin of our teeth, but it is still in grave danger.  The extension until the 31st October clearly means we will be taking part in the European Parliament Elections. 

We did an extraordinary job on March 23rd2019, we got our people to London at relatively short notice, we booked coaches, we organised, we publicised, we stood on our stalls and passed on our passion.  MPs seemed to take notice, and they did for a while, but they are drifting back to type now, and we cannot stop. 
Labour is still playing the “will they won’t they game”, Remain Tories are still in denial that they will suffer at the ballot box if they allow Brexit to continue and we now have a UKIP mark II to contend with, organised and ready to go which will terrify and tempt the big two into trying to grab on to their leave voters with extreme positions. 

If we want all we have done for 2 years including the March march to count at all, we must continue,  Its down to us.  We mobilised marchers and got well over 1 million people on the streets, quite possibly 1.5 million, we spread the revoke article 50 petition to 6 million people still rising.  We need to apply that passion and imagination to the EU elections.    

Looking at the polls today for the EP elections, our remain votes are split, and we may be in danger of not getting our favoured Remain MEPs in.  We cannot allow a result which our opponents can use to say there is a fresh Leave mandate.  We must focus our minds and our actions on how we are going to demonstrate our strength via the EU elections.  So, we must do  the following things.

1. Contact our local remain oriented parties and demand they have an alliance and  joint strategy to maximise the remain vote.  New parties sound great but for our strategic purposes they could be our downfall.  The voting system in these elections still favours big parties.    

2. Labour members you must somehow get your manifesto to be transparently a remain platform.  If you do not do that, you leave labour voters vulnerable to being counted as supporting a Brexit supporting party.
3. We desperately need our best minds and EU experts to help us work out a strategic voting system to achieve our aims.   I have linked below to one I saw today but I suspect we will need several other well-informed voices so we can make our minds up which way to go. 

4.  THE MOST IMPORTANT THING WE CAN DO.    We must get our remain vote out. Us, our friends, our families, our workmates, our young voters, our EU27 citizens who have a vote and a vested interest.  This must happen, no ifs, no buts and we must pour our campaigning energies into this aim. 
We have come so far my friends, its good to stop for a moment and look at what we have achieved, but we still have a long way to go.  I won’t stop yet.  Will you?
@redalphababe

READ: TACTICAL VOTING FOR REMAINERS
WATCH- THE MARCH SPED UP INTO 90 SECONDS

Who is she today

Who is she today?
Her hidden part displayed, brings sadness to the child beside
Crying at a table, not understanding 
Where has the real one gone 
Eyes gazing to the distance, at a scene of what?
Who knows what she sees 
Or hears from the spirits which seek 
to remove her From the reality of life, of family, of love
baffling childhood
Never ordinary 
Who is she today?
Which one is she?  The kind one, the laughing one?  
The one filled with terror? Passing her fear and anger to the closest 
We are locked in her world, we cannot see it but our love binds us to it
No escape 
But periodic busybodies 
A child who just  wants to be normal¡
But the shame of silence hides the truth
puts a chasm of difference, a shield not to pierce 
Friends yes but a lifetime closed book
The child will never reveal herself, just hide in a group 
Where is mother?
Who is she today 
Relief this morning.  A normal today  

@redalphababe 

Freedom of Movement – Brexit is Personal

Flying to London to Protect our rights to Freedom of Movement. 

My partner and I changed our lives completely by chance a couple of years ago after I broke my leg very badly whilst at our holiday apartment in Cyprus. I was able to get the operation I needed using my EHIC, it was a long recovery and we decided to stay there for a few weeks whilst I was wearing a cast as a ground floor apartment was easier to manage than home.  We run our own small business which we started with a credit card with a small limit and a computer on a kitchen table and have run it for more than 20 years and we found we were able to manage the office and staff for a while remotely.  This winter we had already decided to spend some months here again after downsizing in the UK and we use technology to constantly stay in touch with our team back home and to work from our flat.  

Our business sells into the EU27 as well as the UK, employs people, generates lots of tax revenue and VAT for the HMRC and the single market and customs union allowed us to diversify and protect jobs and growth post 2008, a difficult time which could easily have otherwise resulted in our closing down the business as our original marketplaces were being damaged by the credit crunch and its subsequent knock on effects.  I am of Spanish origin and one of my brothers lives in Mallorca.   Our European Citizenship is extremely cherished for all those reasons.  

We have used our rights to Freedom of Movement to change the way we manage our lives.  I know lots of other people who have used their Freedom of Movement to extend their business in the EU or take interesting job opportunities for a couple of years.  One of my members of staff decided a few years ago to just leave the UK and go to the Canary Islands.  She took a job in a bar and has lived there since, and she is very happy.  She wanted to explore something different for a while.  Her original idea was to go to Australia but she didn’t have the points to do that, but the EU gives us a huge diverse territory to explore, whether it’s a temporary plan or a permanent one, no matter who we are or where we come from or how much money we have in the bank.   Rich people always have freedom of movement because they can buy it. Our EU citizenship gives us all rights to broader horizons regardless of who we are or what we have. 

That’s why despite being overseas currently I have arranged to fly to London for the weekend and join my friends from Chester for Europe on the march on Saturday.  The entire Brexit debacle is a shambles and Parliament will be watching us.  They must know that there are politically engaged voters who are looking at their decisions with anger and dismay and want to make their voices heard.  There was a line in an old TV program that sticks in my head, I don’t know who said it originally, but it is true.  “Decisions are made by those that show up”.   Well that’s why I am going fly 2000 miles to show up on Saturday.

@redalphababe

Which Walk

Which walk
Which walk will you take 
which path will you seek? 
200 Max or 1 million min next week
A walk to leave?
Which leaves no doubt 
That the love for leave 
has been rubbed out 
There is no joy in that group 
Their leaders lies flashed sadly en route 
Screens of the past 
Put in the boot.
Abandoned and used 
By conning men 
Cunning politicos are hiding in their den
 They only want photos
They care nothing for you 
or your jobs or your futures or your lives hitherto 
 Billionaires using you for their own ends
Make them stop 
Give up your walk 
FOR these scoundrels and toffs 
Walk instead with us 
We laugh together 
we dance together 
we stand together 
For openness, for friendship, for love regardless of birth
We care and want to make all our futures right and bright.  
We know what that is really worth. 

@redalphababe 


You’re So Vain

I Bet You Think This Blog is About You

A chaotic week closes and where are we?  A group of MPs have finally released themselves from the straight-jacket of hardening ideology in their respective parties, which has paralysed both the party of government and HM opposition.  The parties are so busy circling each other, leaders snarling and growling with their packs baying for a showdown that the business of running the country has been essentially put to one side whilst the Cold War of damaging brexit versus damaging brexit continues at their behest.  
The faces of the TIG MPs display a sense of liberation and joy that they can finally consider answers to questions put to them without having to reference the big book of Red or Blue Designated Answers which has weighed on their shoulders for 2 years.  
It has been good to behold this sudden discovery of independent thought and I truly hope this is the very early start of something solid and real, a change in the way politicians think about and formulate policy in the interests of the country 1st, 2nd and 3rd without being bound to this juvenile idea of “if you aren’t with us you are against us”.
But we have to be practical.  All of that is for later as currently, we are still obstructed from this desirable end by the lack of process to make that happen quickly.  In the meantime, we have a more pressing matter and here is a message to Conservative and Labour MPs and their fervent enablers assuming they are rational thinkers.  You are all so vain I bet you think this blog is about you and your parties. Hear this.  It really isn’t.  
It’s not about party, it’s not about binary choices, it’s not about them and you.  It’s about Us, our lives our families, our businesses, our jobs, our rights. You failed to listen. In October we came to London from across the UK and the EU27 to tell you why we opposed Brexit and how we want to have a final say.  We will come to London again, even more of us this time and we will tell you again.  
We are not really that concerned with your parties or your careers in the main, that’s on you to win our respect and trust so we lend you our vote.   But here is a huge hint to you all.  If you ignore the prospect of the damage that any kind of Brexit presents to the UK (don’t take my word for it,  most experts and business  and even the government’s own assessment are all agreed on this), it’s not going to go well for your seats.  Still, it’s not about you.
It’s about our EU27 friends and family who have been treated like dirt for the last three years.  Some parliamentarians have disrespected them in the most obnoxious way and have carried on ignoring the fact that their status is diminished by Brexit overnight.
It is about our friends and family who live in the EU27 who have been facing insecurity and anxiety as their status too is reduced, most having been completely disenfranchised.  
It’s about our children and grandchildren.  You are enabling those who have themselves benefited personally from freedom of movement and the other benefits of EU membership and citizenship to pull up the ladder behind them and deny those opportunities to future generations.
It’s about our small business community who were able to access the single market  and expand and create growth but now will be faced with new barriers to trade which will probably make them uncompetitive.  
It’s about the communities who will suffer as large employers move all or some of their operations to the EU27 in order to protect themselves, their shareholders and investors and their bottom line as you erect barriers between them and the biggest trading bloc in the world.  The knock on effect of this will be felt in the wider business community which serves the bigger companies.  It won’t happen overnight, it will be a slow drawn out decline.  The ERG dreams of turning us into a tax haven on the edge of Europe may benefit a few but it won’t add much to our regions except for the further widening of inequality which of course has been a massive factor in getting us to where we are. Incidentally our standards and protections will be the first casualties of the scrabble for trade deals.  Your constituents won’t thank you for that either.
It’s about all of us who feel Brexit as a personal assault on the fabric of our identities as we are stripped of an EU citizenship that many of us had no idea just how much we valued but took for granted.  We won’t make that mistake again.  
It’s about our shame as we hear the experiences of migrants in our communities subjected to a feeling of alienation within their neighbourhoods or workplaces or even the hostility of strangers towards them for daring to speak a foreign language on the train.  There are many considering their position, others have already left to another place where they feel more welcome.  
It’s about our friends and families on the island of Ireland who are very worried and furious at the lunacy of Westminster and its effect on their business but more importantly the Good Friday Agreement.  The uncertainty is toxic, the peace is still young and make no mistake there are elements lurking waiting to take advantage of a hard border in order to further their own agendas and nefarious activities. 
So when we are giving you a hard time, when we demand to know the answers to our extremely fair questions like why are you pressing on with Brexit when it is not in the interests of the country,  when we tell you our concerns because we are going to lose jobs or split families, its not about you or your party.  It’s about us, the people you swear to represent in the best way you can.  It’s time for you to find your courage just like the TIG and do the right thing for us and the country and end this brexit shambles.  If you cannot revoke article 50 then please find a way to  give us the baton and we will decide for you in a final say.  We have the courage even if you don’t because it’s about us. 
@redalphababe