#stopbrexit – Write to Speak

Letter from the EU no 3 – a question of identity?ó

Dear Friends,

As the 2019 comes to a close, I write this letter from a beautiful part of the Mediterranean. The sun has been shining a fair bit and the catastrophic general election results feel a long way away for now. I don’t expect a miracle. Johnson has his majority in parliament so it would require a really big fat miracle to stop him getting his withdrawal agreement Bill through even with the pretty disgraceful wholesale dumping of previous undertakings he had made to “protect workers rights” and to help refugee children. I fear this is but a sign of bigger dumping of rights to come.

How do I feel? I normally write about the impacts of these things on others, but I am going to dwell just for today on my emotional self. I lived my entire life, bar my first 3 years, in the UK. My siblings were all a fair few years older, I was, you might say, a late hatch. My brothers and sister had memories of Spain; I have none from actually living there.

I always found thinking about my identity challenging. I think I do have an innate Spanishness, but I also look at lots of things with very British eyes. My humour is a mix of the love of the fatalistic and dark with an admiration for clever use of the English language and irony. When amongst Spanish people I feel my hispanic blood, with British I feel the Britishness. This strange mix inside me has led to some confused thinking at times. When Theresa May used the term “citizen of nowhere”, as offensive as that phrase is especially in the context she used it, there is a little nugget of fear in my gut that that is how people may see me, neither one thing or another. Whoever I am with, I always feel I must hold back some part of myself to be accepted. My identity is wrapped up in my blood and genes, the land of my birth and the land of my life plus some other family dynamics.

In 2005 I decided to naturalise as a British Citizen. I saw this as a way to settle some things in my head. I felt the need to make a commitment to the UK. There were crazy practical reasons like the fact that I could not vote in the UK where I paid my tax and where it affected my life, but I could, if I so wished, register to vote in Spain where I had never lived. This seemed just silly. But really this important decision was only possible because I had the backstop that I was a European and in legal terms a European Citizen and therefore my rights were protected. My EU citizenship allowed me to resolve how all the confusing jigsaw pieces of the essence of me fitted together comfortably, peacefully. I could make the commitment to my British part because the Spanish part could never be removed.

As we approach the 31st January, I will have a grieving process to go through as I lose my EU citizenship. Spain does not allow dual nationality. I don’t know at this point if I will be able to resolve this without losing my British passport but frankly, I am as angry today as I was on the 24th June 2016. I don’t want to choose between the essential parts which make me the person I am, and I don’t see why I should have to.

I currently find the way forward unclear and muddled. We have talked seriously for some years about relocating to Spain to be on the European mainland, an experience we thought we wanted to do for a while at least, but now I don’t know what the implications would be of that and my thinking is foggy and the ensuing indecision is something I will have to work through.

Apart from everything else, I worry about my beloved United Kingdom and whether it is actually wrong to leave right now instead of fighting for the open and tolerant and modern country it was and could be again, the place it was heading towards being before the treacherous poison of Brexit swamped its pores whilst malign voices whispered into the ear of ordinary people that the fault of their dissatisfaction lay in their relationships with their neighbours instead of the truth, that it was the whisperers, their landlords who were failing to fix the holes in the roof which let the rain into their lives.

I don’t know the answers yet, that’s a work in progress, but I do know that my feelings about my identity are once more on the table and that makes me sad and angry in equal measure. What makes me most angry is that what I have temporarily lost is the ability to find a note of hope and optimism to end this letter on. All I can say is that we need to be kind to each other and find a path to forgiveness to vanquish the difficult times ahead.

@redalphababe

Truth, the Optional Extra

When I was at school, l I was taught that when you cheat the only loser is you. The morality aside, on a practical level this is sound advice for the important things in life and I feel grateful to have been given this insight from a young age. Think what would happen if you were a brain surgeon and you had cheated your way through your medical training. I don’t suppose you would last long before not knowing the difference between cerebrum and cerebellum gets you struck off. If you get somebody else to take your driving test, the first time you run over a pedestrian could make you live to regret your bad choice in life and honesty.

It seems that the Conservative Party, in its current form, went to a different school that never discussed such ethical issues. Cheating has been adopted as a stock feature of their modus operandi for some time now. Johnson, Gove and Cummings were all middle of the Leave EU lawbreaking debacle. We must conclude that given their leading positions in the campaign, these things were within their sphere of influence and therefore they must bear some responsibility. Ian Lucas, Wrexham MP, who was on a committee examining these issues, in his departing speech, was very clear they had all failed to answer for their actions or certain knowledge that the campaign had cheated its way to a small majority for Leave. From deceitful Facebook ads served up to unsuspecting targets whose data had been illegally mined, to diverting funds which were an overspend to the BeLeave campaign, they have all indulged in pretending that was “nothing to do with us guv”.

Borsi with a glass talking rubbish

Lies about the money. Lies about the foreigners. Lies about the benefits of giving up our EU membership. The floor of the houses of parliament is littered with the ashes of all the broken promises of the leave campaign and May’s government and now under Boris Johnson, the cheating continues at an even greater pace. The Election campaign is one of the dirtiest I can ever remember in my 51 years on this earth. The Conservative Party has lied and lied and lied, they have doctored videos of Starmer, they have hidden important reports from the public including the contents of the Russia report which ex Tory Dominic Grieve is very concerned about. They had a Facebook advert removed and the other night they renamed their blue tick Press Office account to pretend they were a fact checking account. They have paid for keywords on google relating to the Labour manifesto so they can point people to a website they created in order to attack it. Interestingly we had a company do that to us once, they paid for a short phrase which happened to be our company name and interfering with our site traffic as a result. Thankfully it was one of our suppliers, so we were able to get them to stop, their media agency hadn’t realised, but it’s a very sneaky trick to deliberately and we were furious.

Cheating or trying to get one over on political rivals with dirty tactics – it’s all designed to steal your vote. But, you say, all politicians lie. Well yes I suppose they do in relatively small ways and I think they definitely have a history of U-turns and failing to carry through manifesto commitments, but answer honestly, is it normal for them to lie about Russian interference in our elections, or to cheat in referendums and general elections? Is it normal for a politician to deny their presence in a hospital is a photo opportunity to a patient’s dad when the cameras are literally pointed at them whilst having the conversation? How big do the lies have to be before everybody wakes up and starts to take responsibility for their own vote in the light of all this.

The UK is a nation which was united in its outrage when Maradona scored his Hand of God goal. They rightly saw the chance for England to win the World Cup had been stolen. The UK is a nation which was united in its shock at the expenses scandal when, amongst many other similar revelations, a Tory MP paid for his duck house out of taxpayer’s funds. The nation rightly saw this fiddling as a theft of their money. Nobody shrugged and said well “whatever”. Sadly, something seems to have been lost since then.

The polls appear to show Boris Johnson’s lies are just being completely ignored by half the public. I think we have to blame several people, not just politicians but also the press which for 3 years have mostly blanked the cheating that occurred during 2016 or they have echoed the Brexit lie, that “both sides cheated”. Both sides did not cheat but the myth persists. Ignoring the law breaking in 2016 set the scene for a normalisation of big fat whopping lies and I fear that voters have been totally inured to it just at the very moment we have to contend with Boris Johnson, the Truth Optional Prime Minister, trying to get a majority so he can continue with his mad Brexit.

Moreover if ALL the opposition parties had also picked up on the work that dedicated journalists like Carole Cadwalladr have done at a higher level at a much earlier point, we would, I feel, have been in a very different place right now. For too long we heard the respect the vote argument and that has really damaged us.

But now there is no excuse as we see with our own eyes fresh evidence of lying and cheating by what is left of the Tory Party after they got rid of most of the honourable MPs they had on their back benches. Broadcasters have finally realised they are supposed to challenge politicians and are doing so quite well actually. Yet the polls show people are not abandoning Tories despite this and I wonder if this is because they want to be on the winning side, and they think Johnson will win.

I would say to those still thinking of voting for a man who cheats to win, he will cheat on them too in the end. Johnson, Gove, Cleverley all of them, they will be alright Jack. They will have their power, their jobs, their money. Ordinary voters will be the people who pay for their hard Brexit. Our children will lose rights. Our communities will suffer as the promises about money for the regions replacing the EU Regional funding ends up consigned as a distant dream. In fact I haven’t heard anybody mention regional funds lately. Those 40 hospitals, well, given there is no timetable laid out do we really believe that they will ever materialise? The Russian Report, why, if it shows there is no evidence of interference in our democratic processes, does Johnson not release it?

But I come back to where I started, on this idea that when you cheat, you only cheat yourself. Well, perhaps my teachers didn’t tell me the whole story because in the case of Johnson and his cronies, we are in danger of allowing them to not only get away with it, but prosper from their lies. Life may in time deliver a form of natural justice to them but by then our economy will be trashed and we will be greatly diminished on the world stage as hard Brexit bites in every part of our lives. We simply cannot wait on the offchance that random fate will intervene on our behalf. We have only a handful of tools available to us right now in this hateful and dirty election. We must deny these people a majority and in our first past the post system this is what we can do.

Call out the lies. Don’t let it pass. If somebody you know, family or colleague or friend shares a Johnson post you know to be incorrect or repeats a myth, tell them. Calmly and politely and gently challenge the myths. Small conversations with your mates could make all the difference.
Make sure everybody you know is registered to vote and cajole them to get out and vote on the day. Talk through the issues with them. There are nearly a third of the electorate who are not registered, they have been called the Unheard Third. Support campaigns such as this website which gives useful advice as to how we can persuade people to use their voices.
We must look hard at our own constituency and consider whether Tactical Voting is going to help us. Do the research. There are several sites, look at them all. In fact somebody just gave me a link to this one which compares all the tactical voting sites at once so you can see If there is consensus emerging as to which candidate can best beat the Brexiter candidates. Keep checking too because all the sites add data from polling as the election campaign goes on, some of the opinions may change.

Tactical sites are good but there is no perfect science to this, and local knowledge is also useful when deciding if you aren’t sure. Talk to your local pro EU group and see if they can give you any further insights. Whilst you are talking to your local pro EU group, please consider giving them a hand. Most have ongoing voter registration campaigns and other initiatives running at the moment. They will be grateful for any assistance you can give. They can probably put you in touch with the right people if you want to directly help a particular candidate campaign. There is a lot of local cross-party support for campaigning going on in target seats by pro EU activists.

We have come this far together, my friends, from being a disparate bunch of baffled sad or angry people, to a massive grass roots movement determined to put the wrongs of 2016 right, We have given up ridiculous numbers of hours of our personal time to fight the Brexit Beast, neglected our lives in other areas in some cases because we believe it is so disastrous. Why throw that hard work away on partisan rows. if we genuinely want to win this round so we can stay in the game to stop Brexit, we are up against a group of people who are so desperate to get their Brexit they will cheat and lie over and over to get what they want and its only by working together that we have a hope of making sure they are stopped.

@redalphababe

Letter from the EU No 2

Dear Friends.

I thought it was time for a catch up. We have been travelling for nearly 3 weeks now in Eric our lovely motorhome. Eric has looked after us well though we got into a bit of a scrape in a Lidl when we caught the roof with the roof of a parking place. No harm done just a little embarrassment. We have travelled down through France into the North of Spain and then down through Portugal.

Having entered Spain from France with not much of a fanfare, we had set our route on non-toll roads and we had a couple of lovely days in San Sebastian also known as Donostia in Basque. We wild camped in Leon for a night and decided to press on to Santiago de Compostela which was an important stop in Galicia for me. We had booked 3 days in a campsite in the city.

Santiago de Compostela is the city of my birth. I have few memories of that place, given I was an infant when my family left, but I do have some pictures in my head from visits there and I cling to them. Our memories are part of what makes us who we are. They keep our feet on the ground and our memories of love comfort our hearts and give strength to us in times of our greatest need.

camino

As we got closer to the city, we could see from the motorhome more and more pilgrims walking along El Camino, the walk of Saint James. They strode along the paths mostly alone, easily recognisable in the big waterproof hooded capes over their bodies and rucksacks and carrying the sticks. Some had the traditional tall stick to help them along the way, whilst some used the more up to date Nordic walking sticks. I wondered with each pilgrim what their story was. Why were they alone on a track on a rainy day in November? What were they looking for? There were so many more walkers than I expected to see. I imagined a multitude of personal lives, all strangers but united by their common physical goal but with different spiritual agendas. Were these people on their lone walk driven by grief or love? A businessman escaping the rat-race. A woman looking to lay down the burden of a painful divorce. A priest drained by the lives of pain of his flock seeking a reaffirmation of his faith, a spiritual rebirth to excite and restore his weary jaded bones so he had something left to share out. A vane politician, a puffed-up peacock in all the gear, doing something interesting he could write about in his memoirs to make him look good. A woman determined to challenge herself physically as she never had before. A young man of the Instagram Generation taking photos and selfies at each marker which displays the shell, the symbol that the pilgrims follow.

The city sprawled ahead of us and we found our way to the campsite and without further ado walked to the old town and the Cathedral. As soon as saw the stone arches and cobbled streets of the old town, it all felt hugely familiar. I was delighted to recognise one of the roads and a café in front of the Alameda (park) which I think was there when my grandmother was alive. We ate mussels and drank wine there as the barmen chattered to each other animatedly moaning about their families.

The following day, we set off to look for the street where I was born. As we walked down a road, I glanced around and knew I had been there before. It was the market and being a Saturday morning we went to have a look. The market thronged with colourful loud chattering Gallegos. It is made up of corridors with stalls on each side. Each corridor was devoted to a theme. Fish, Meat, Vegetables. Women barked out questions to the fishmongers and men stood in the middle chattering to each other about football. Our mouths watered as we strolled through the crowds and smelled the freshness of all the produce. The octopus red and plump, the fish shining and bright eyed, the cheeses creamy and delicious, the bread and cake stall surrounded by excited children waiting to choose a bun.

market

Part of my DNA belongs in this market. My Grandmother, my Abuela, brought up my mother and aunt alone and made her living by trading in Padron Peppers, buying them from the farmers coming in from the country and doing deals with the stall holders. Not so much city trader but definitely trading in a city. It helped her pay the bills and put food on the table at a time when being a woman alone was not easy.

We were delighted, on turning the corner to find an entire hallway with bars and kitchens, and signs inviting people to buy their produce from the market, and have it cooked by these fine chefs. There were many people taking up the offer, big family groups and groups of twenty somethings crowded around the tables eating clams and drinking wine and beer.

I felt slightly sad that for various reasons we had grown so separate from this city, from this region having moved to the UK. I guess there was no internet and no Facebook, no cheap flights, so families that migrated were less able to keep their links intact as the older generations died. I vowed that I would spend some time tracking down family members and arrange a longer trip to visit them.

The market and the memories I had tapped into were almost more exciting than finding the house of my birth which, with a little whatsapping with my brother, I finally found. I was slightly disappointed to realise the front façade had been changed, as, in my imagination I could still see my Grandmothers front balcony stuffed full of colourful flowers in pots.

We topped off the day with a visit to the inside of the cathedral. Now, I will just have to come back because there is a massive renovation going on so much of the inside is covered in scaffold though you can still visit the apostle’s crypt. The pilgrims were numerous here as traditionally they end their walk embracing the reputed remains of Saint James of the city title.

st james

The other great tradition was the Botafumeiro which is basically a giant incense burner which priests swing over the heads of the congregation on the end of a rope. I saw it as a child and stood looking at the altar and closed my eyes so I could conjure up the smell and the sounds in my mind. The Botafumeiro cannot operate whilst the renovation is going on, so a revisit is on the cards in the next couple of years.

The most interesting aspect of the city is the sounds. Gallegos talk loudly, laugh together loudly. When I was growing up in the UK, my friends used to ask me what I was arguing with my mother about in Spanish. I didn’t know what they were talking about. We weren’t arguing we were just talking. This entire city was filled with people just talking.

cathedral

I felt the history of my Abuela in this place of my birth as we strolled through the Alameda and admired the benches and fountains which I recognised from my childhood. I am a child of Europe, it lives in me and is an important part of what made me. This makes me happy.

@redalphababe

Tories, Tactics, Tribalism

Looking in on twitter there seems a lot of anxiety around which is understandable given the fix we have been put in by our politicians. The tribalism which accompanies elections in a first past the post system has been unleashed as the parties and their activists square up to each other. This was always going to be the problem with an election.

The only good thing so far is that the Tories who are currently running their party into the gutter, are failing to hide their true natures and creating a whirlwind of sleaze and lies around themselves. No matter how hard they try, Johnson and his top snakeoil sales team just can’t help tripping over their own egos. They have driven out some really sensible moderates who would normally be ushered in to try and explain things calmly to the nation and gloss over the various faux pas of their colleagues. But now we just glaze over when they send someone in to double down on their nonsense because it’s always an over confident self serving ERG rep.

Those of us who remember the Tory sleaze debacle in the 90s will remember that once these dropped balls start, they keep bouncing back in their faces. But as awful as these people and their offering are, we do well not to be complacent. There will be many Brexit weary voters who will be wooed by the lies of getting the B word done. So if, like me, you put stopping Brexit above any other political consideration, this is where we must concentrate.

Keep calling,out the deal, keep calling out the false promises, keep the pressure on. It does us no good to get embroiled in arguments with other remainers and distracts us from our best weapon, the failure of May, Johnson and their cabinets. They lost every vote virtually because they failed to persuade parliament to support them. That’s not because there was something wrong with parliament, it’s because their Brexit policy was a complete failure. For 3.5 years they failed. Theresa May failed to keep her majority by calling an election. She then failed to persuade Johnson and the people who became his ministers or support her Brexit.

Johnson took over and lost nearly every vote. Again he failed to get the support of Parliament and his own colleagues. We need to keep revisiting their failures and their broken promises and yes their cheating. Don’t let it go. Keep talking about it.

As for tactical voting I am all in favour of it. But we must stop getting distracted or angry because parties are campaigning. It’s going to happen and some of it will feel stupid or counter productive. But we have little control over that and only so much energy so let’s try and put it to positive initiatives. We aren’t going to be able to force parties to do everything we want them to do in terms of decisions about who to stand down, and we aren’t going to be able to persuade their most tribal supporters to vote for someone else. Let’s just accept that and concentrate on the people we can persuade.

On the vexed issue of Labour and their Brexit fudge, I have been thinking this through and have an idea. Assuming you want to vote tactically and your best hope for a remain MP in your constituency is a Labour candidate, but you are nervous about a repeat of the 80% rubbish, I suggest that you do the following.

a. Ask them directly if they will honour the promise of a Peoples Vote in all circumstances and

b. If they satisfy you with that answer, put in writing to them that your are supporting them in your constituency because they are promising a Peoples Vote with a remain option and your vote must never be counted by anybody as a pro Brexit vote in any way shape or form. This will keep their minds focused.

The most important thing you can do is talk to friends and family , signpost them to the different Tactical Voting sites if they are unsure what to do and want brexit to go away or end. Bear in mind as polling is done in the campaign, some of the key seats may change in terms of recommendation.

Support your local Pro EU group. We are all doing voter registration drives. If you can help us tap into younger voters too we really need your input.

If you want to campaign and door knock for remain candidates please volunteer. Again local pro EU groups are being given information on who to contact for anybody who wants to campaign for remain candidates. There are key marginals where the pro remain individual with the best chance of winning needs extra pairs of hands. If your pro remain MP is relatively secure maybe you can help in a neighbouring marginal constituency.

But please, if you are outside the tribal bubble like me, don’t waste your time being drawn into arguments with party activists, they aren’t going to be persuaded. Make the case for tactical voting and people can agree or not. Remember if we manage to get a remain parliament and deny Johnson the majority he craves to run rampant with right wing policies and a damaging Brexit which threatens our families and livelihoods, we will all need to work together in a referendum.

Within my own local group in Chester which contains some passionate activists for different parties and also passionate activists who only campaign to stop brexit and not for parties, we are very conscious that we need to come out of the other side of this general election not only intact and together but we need to retain our biggest strength in a referendum, we do not have any party affiliations and we can talk to anybody and it is imperative that stays that way.

Where are you? It’s Time to speak out

Where are you business? Why have so many of you remained silent for so long? I saw an article the other day in Marketing Week complaining about politicians using the language of piracy when it comes to business. It was an excellent article and I wholly agree that politicians depicting business people as “buccaneers” are on a completely different planet to the actual Business community. However I departed company with the message later in the article which was rather more optimistic about how it will go after brexit than I am. It was one of those “it will be alright on the night” type calls. Businesses will prevail and adapt etc etc. I however see no benefits to business in this Daft Brexit Bullshit.

The companies who will survive Brexit and rebuild after being made uncompetitive in our closest marketplaces will be those already doing business outside the EU and the ones with deep pockets and good contacts.

One of the greatest benefits of the SM and CU is that we can sell our wares in Manchester or Munich with very little hassle. Yes of course depending on the industry there are hoops to jump but there are always hoops to jump for anything worth having, But I can assure you, the hoops won’t be magically disappearing any time soon and we will end up with even more bureaucracy. For example our business has had to register for VAT in various EU locations because of our business model. This was an absolute pain in the backside and involved extra costs, but we went to the effort of doing so and now we have our agents in place and month to month all our reporting goes smoothly. This is not going to change if we are a third country. We will still have the same vat reporting and taxation requirements as a minimum and if we were to sell into the US for example, there are several tax reporting requirements to deal with. This is on top of the customs regulations we will have to navigate.

No no no, you are dreaming if you think there is going to be a bonfire of red tape or regulation as a third country. It can only increase along with the costs and probably duties.

Our movement of stock around the EU is currently trouble free, its been easy to manage. The standards we need to exceed are the same in the UK as they are in France or Germany, so no extra layers of complexity there. What this regulatory alignment means is that relatively small firms have been able to access European markets. But what is this government doing? It’s adding friction and barriers to our biggest markets before we have anything in place to replace the resulting reduction in turnover and profit. It is absolutely crazy and can only lead to many companies getting smaller and less competitive in the short and medium term. Rebuilding after a knock takes a long time.

I don’t know why politicians think all this is a jolly idea, but in business if you aren’t growing you are probably shrinking and to reduce our competitiveness in a market of 500 million people on our doorstep is frankly the maddest thing any government has ever done to the UK.

I am tired of MPs bizplaining I am tired of people who have never sold so much as a paperclip to their gran telling me it will be fine. It will not be fine. It will be horrible, truly horrible. Jobs will go up and down the country, businesses will move or close either voluntarily or because they are no longer viable. All this is already happening in drips, a slow ebb which will gradually turn into a steady stream, then a torrent.

If you are a person who believes in preserving independent business and the small business sector, why are you not up in arms? Brexit can only damage these sectors. What we will see is small business swallowed up by a smaller and smaller number of large corporations. The business environment will favour even bigger and even more corporate organisations. The bigger you are, the deeper pockets you have, the more likely you will survive the Brexit disaster which will completely get in the way of SME and small and micro business opportunities.

After the 2008 crash, a niche we were in which had enabled strong growth for several years because it was too small for the big boys to bother with suddenly caught their eye as they scrabbled around to protect their falling revenues and profit elsewhere. Pretty soon our niche was broken for everyone. Margins were trashed, some of our same size competitors driven out by big companies. We had to move on and find new ways to recover margin. After Brexit the same will happen on a bigger scale to many companies around the country. Knock on effects on local companies will become apparent. Smaller players will close the door or sell up if they can. I can see even more family farms, for example, going into large corporations. The independents will be forced out and we will see even greater domination by big business.

For those of us who have spent our working lives fighting to keep our independent businesses in the game, healthy and growing, the mass vandalism coming our way of the small business sector by the Brexit Glitterati is going to be the saddest thing to see!

So where are you? March with us on the 19th October in London. It could be our last chance to send the message we need to test if this is really what we want?

@redalphababe
#peoplesvote #peoplesvotemarch #stopbrexit #smallbusiness #smallbiz #business

Parliament is for the 66 Million

There has been much anger and recrimination this week in the world of politics and the use of inflammatory language came under the spotlight during Boris Johnson’s deeply divisive speech to the House of Commons. His constant use of the word surrender and terms such as traitor bandied about by his ERG MPs and the Brexit/Tory press echoes the kind of language used in death threats to MPs around the country, MPs who either support a peoples vote or have voted against the government. Even MPs such as Antoinette Sandbach have had death threats and abuse simply for opposing a no-deal Brexit having voted for Theresa May’s Deal on every occasion.

Let’s just get rid of the “both sides argument”. It’s absolute nonsense. Only a few months ago Anna Soubry was harassed by a group of men who surrounded and followed her shouting at her. She was prevented from speaking at a rally recently because of threats.

There have been several incidents where street campaigners for the #PeoplesVote and pro EU movement have been verbally and physically abused. 2 personal friends of mine alone have had to endure such incidents and we have seen various other cases caught on camera. Pro EU group SODEM, have campaigned outside the House of Commons for 2 years but it has only been since just before Christmas when far right groups started to appear in small but vocal numbers when we have seen these kinds of incidents against MPs and even journalists start to ramp up.

This group of men and women also, having fashioned themselves with little self-awareness on the french Gilet Jaune movement, were filming themselves having a go at people, getting in their faces, trying to provoke, then using those videos to raise money for themselves, winding up a small group of people vulnerable to their messages into parting with hard cash and using all those terms, traitor, nazi, etc for that end. This all echoes the language used by a man who did in fact murder an MP because he didn’t like what she had to say. No wonder MPs now have panic buttons in their houses.

However, thankfully, all these acts are committed by a very small number of people who are in effect massive anti-democrats despite their protestations to the contrary. The overwhelming majority of people coming to our street stalls are on the whole polite and respectful even when they disagree passionately with us. They recognise we are exercising our democratic right to campaign for something we want to change.

The biggest irony is these other anonymous cowards who throw bricks through windows or write poison pen letters are angry because MPs are doing the very job we pay them to do. The people are not 17.4 million people who put a cross against a binary option in what was, legally speaking, just an opinion poll in 2016. This is a complete nonsense and I am extremely tired of the use of this number to try and silence us. It will not. The people are #66Million and the job of Parliament is to scrutinise and approve, or not, legislation which is in the best interest of the 66 million. ALL the people regardless of what or who they voted for. Their interests are protected by their MPs who are chosen to listen and research the evidence and understand it and vote accordingly, not to to be their delegates.

Something else undermines the 17 million argument. In 2017 the public saw fit to remove the Conservative majority. This was an indication that they did not approve wholeheartedly of Theresa May’s approach and red lines. If they had they would have returned a Tory majority wouldn’t they? Yet we ended up even more confused about what the will of the people was, not less. But Theresa May pressed on regardless and here we are with a multiple of people claiming they know what the will of the people is. Who knows what people voted for, it changes with every day which passes if you listen to the ERG and the Poison Pens all of whom love to move those goal posts.

So what can we cling to? We can rely on our democracy which allows groups like those of us in the Remain Movement to campaign peacefully to make the arguments that are at the core of our unity. We campaign for what we believe is in the interests of 66 million but we do so by following the rules, by making the arguments that make sense, by using evidence, by lobbying our representatives. We campaign in good faith and peace and yes in passion too but never in violence.

But there is something else we must cling to. We must continue to support our parliament in trying to find the best route which is in the interests of the entire population. We must stop dividing the people and most importantly, politicians must stop dividing the people and we must encourage them to this end. Their job is to put the good of their entire constituency foremost in their decision making process.

There are many, many MPs who are now doing their jobs properly. They are scrutinising the executive, an executive who now wants to overstep its authority in order to bully them into following it’s will – not the people’s will, the ERG will. Yes parliament voted against May’s deal but this is because considering everything, they deemed the deal was not right. Even the ERG voted against it. This is not a parliament blocking brexit, this is a parliament doing it’s job. If what the executive is trying to do threatens the well-being of their constituents their responsibility is to stop this, not enable it, and it doesn’t matter what their constituents voted for or whether they voted at all in 2016.

If the executive are unable to offer an acceptable brexit route, that means the executive’s solution is poor, below par, substandard. Politicians should be able to carry out parliamentary business in light of this without fear of danger so they can serve us all. They should also be able to do that without commentators like Brendan O’Neill appearing on a BBC news programme inciting riots for Brexit. They should be able to do that without being pursued down the street by threatening men representing Leave means Leave. Even as I write this, the radio plays the voice of men talking up the idea of rioting by people who voted leave. This has no bearing on the reality around the country. Remain events attract 100s of 1000s of attendees with no trouble and no arrests. Leave rallies attract a few thousand at most, often only a few hundred, and the only violence has been seen from a tiny proportion of men and women of violence in their fringe groups. The country cannot be held to ransom by this tiny group of extremists. Likewise we as campaigners should be able to work using the rules and all democratic means in the interests of 66 million, which is the abiding emotion that binds us and drives us, without fear of abuse.

If MPs, whose full time job it is to study and understand the detail of proposed legislation cannot actually agree which version of Brexit is in the interests of their constituents after 3 years, this begs the question “Is there a brexit which is good for their constituents?” If they still can’t agree on that, they must be allowed to determine a path or mechanism which will resolve that question, taking into account the best interests of the entire population, preferably and unfortunately a referendum. On the other hand if we allow MPs to be bullied or frightened into voting or supporting a particular piece of legislation by government which will damage their constituents and the country, that will be the day democracy dies.

The people are #66million.

A Life in Business, Tomb Raider and Brexit – Revisited

I wrote this in August 2018. Not a great deal has changed. We are still in the EU and long may it continue. For many people it is already too late. businesses have moved. $1 trillion is leaving Britain because of Brexit. I personally know good people who have already lost their jobs and are struggling to get work in the supply chains for the automotive industry. I know people who have sold up or retired because they just can’t face the coming storms. I wrote this to give you some understanding of what it is like to run a small business and updated some information on the numbers of businesses in the UK from the Governments statistics. It’s interesting to note that numbers HAVE dropped since 2017.

I sometimes think a life in business is like playing Tomb Raider. It’s a strange analogy, I know. Having spent more hours than I should have sneaking onto my son’s computer in the noughties there are some similarities so bear with me whilst I try to explain my logic.

When you start, the first couple of levels seem easy. You are well signposted, there are plenty of instructions, there’s lots of information available to guide you and give you some clues about which direction to explore in. You can, if you have been cautious, afford a few false starts before you have fully committed yourself heart and soul into the game ahead. Most importantly, you get a huge buzz out of every problem you solve and feel happy as you work your way up, around and through and over all the obstacles towards your goal.

It’s not long before you get on to the harder levels. There are fewer pointers here. You have an idea of where you want to go but in the words of Oasis, “all the roads we have to walk are winding, and all the lights that lead us there are blinding “. Every new level brings with it unfamiliar territory. The problems are harder to solve, the obstacles trickier. There are sabre toothed tigers and baddies with pistols around the corner threatening to end your game. Along the way you acquire new skills and weapons. You make mistakes you lose a life you try again having learned from your mistakes. But here is where the analogy departs for a while because suddenly your business is your life, it has become almost your entire life and now you are immersed the consequences of the decisions you must make are very real.

I am not an academic or an expert or an economist. All I can offer are my personal thoughts having been a co-director of a small business for 20 years. In fact, I have been involved in small businesses since I left university in the late 80s. During all those years we have seen many things. I have experienced dealing with bailiffs at the door and conversely been in the fortunate position of being able to help when others were at a similar low point. There have been times when we had to sell everything we could to help us through cash flow squeezes or borrowed heavily on credit cards to make month end and times when making money was easy and we have been able to happily reinvest in the business to expand and move it forward. We have had the privilege of building a team of people who do their best for us every day. We have been able to borrow to invest and taken many risks and chances, always calculated but sometimes dicey even so. Some paid off some did not. This is life. We make decisions, some are right, some are wrong, some work out, some not so much. Just as in a computer game though, we only have so many business lives. Unlike Lara, we can’t reboot and replay the game once all our chances have gone.

Here is the thing I have learned. However stable a business is, nearly all companies are really only 3 to 6 months away from annihilation. From time to time paperwork will cross my desk from a liquidator winding up a customer or supplier and I always notice the same thing. The implosion after the crisis point is pretty dramatic and rapid.

There are several reasons why a crisis can occur. Bang – a change in government policy. Slap – a loss of an important contract. Biff – the most profitable product is now out of fashion. Punch – a miscalculation of stock. Crash – a sudden dramatic move in currency exchange rates. Kick – a rise in interest rates when over-borrowed. Zap – a stupid misjudgement on an expansion plan.

This is not an exhaustive list but any of these things can happen to any SME with fatal consequences for their business. The liquidators move in. Suppliers switch to self-protect mode. All the value everyone thought was there ebbs away and dissipates like Lara’s energy bar, as the customer base drifts off to competitors, stock is marked down, customers find reasons not to pay their outstanding bills and the accountants and bankers who make their living out of the dead bones of SMEs take their cut. Long standing contacts distance themselves uncomfortably, embarrassed to admit a superstitious fear that failure could be catching. I look at the updates from these liquidators and I shake my head with sorrow as it could be any of us. I doubt I am the only one who sees it this way.

So you see, the life of a small business is fragile. We plan, we build reserves, we look at the prevailing conditions, the things out of our control, and we try to make sensible decisions, we hedge against our vulnerabilities where we can, we look for opportunities to get ahead and hope they pay off. Here is where I come around in a roundabout way to Brexit. The fragility of SMEs means we are heading for some extremely difficult times with Brexit looming. Remember my list of potential obstacles? Well for a proportion of the 5.7million SMEs and even some of the large businesses, Brexit, any flavour of Brexit on the menu, will mete out a number of those blows simultaneously. The companies affected won’t so much be rolling with the punches as knocked unconscious before they have had a chance to even buy gloves. We could do some contingency planning, we are doing what we can, but when there is a finite amount of time and resource and personnel we need to know roughly what we are planning for otherwise we may as well just buy a lottery ticket.

If you voted Leave, you – yes I do mean each and every one of you – have helped to put my business in harm’s way, but not just mine. A great many SMEs will face existential challenges because of a direct effect on their EU sales, disruption in the supply chain, an increase in their input costs or less directly because of a downturn, which will most definitely come, leading to cuts in their customers spending in the short to medium term. 2 years on and I still have not seen a convincing reason which explains why we are voluntarily following this insane path. There is no benefit to me and mine, my staff or my business and after asking the question multiple times, nobody credible has ever been able to cite a specific example of a benefit to my business or my life.

My partner and I are both from working class backgrounds, we started out with no contacts and no capital but lots of bravado. Over the years we have adapted, diversified and changed our business model to suit changing business environments. We have battled and fought and sought the tenacity we needed to keep ourselves in the game. We have reinvested our profits, taken chances, learned from our errors, some of them bad ones. Some days I look at the uncertainties ahead and the idea of giving up, selling what we can and going away somewhere regardless of the consequences crosses my mind for a moment. But I know we are not quitters and we will fight on, one problem at a time, one obstacle at a time.

For many in business however, Brexit might just become like one of the nightmarish corridors in Tomb Raider Level 20 with the jets of fire, a sword of Damocles and a giant boulder rolling behind. There will be too many obstacles coming together in too short a time to negotiate successfully and no amount of stockpiled medi-packs will get us through to the next level. Don’t be surprised if some players decide to just quietly turn the computer off and take up yoga.

Disaster Capitalism, takedowns and takeovers revisited.

I wrote these words over a year ago as part of a longer piece which was an analyis of the then situation with the two main parties both of who had succumbed to populist forces, but looking at the stories about Johnson’s cronies betting against the economy today I think this story perfectly illustrates #disastercapitalism.

I woke up this morning with my mind on an old customer whose story I would like to share. I don’t wish to name names, so, as it amuses me, I will call them Dave, Ed & Nick LLP. They were a customer for the best part of a decade. I personally looked after their account and every other day would be talking to their excellent general manager John who ran the show for the owners, taking his orders, sorting out his problems, make sure his supplies and equipment arrived when he wanted them where he wanted them, keeping him happy. A wonderful chap, an expert (yes, I know expertise is so last year), keeping his employer’s ship on a steady course for many years. John knew what he was doing. Sometimes he dropped a clanger or would make totally unreasonable demands and I would be swearing and muttering to myself around the office as I tried to figure out a solution that would get him out of a fix. I always did and often it cost us money and he wasn’t always as grateful as I would have liked, but he always paid the bills and gave a fair price. Our working relationship was both excellent and mutually beneficial.

Then out of the blue the Dave, Ed & Nick LLP partners all wanted to retire and sell up. John decided to go to pastures new and his assistant, Ben was put in his place. We were assured there would be no change, we would have the exact same benefits and relationship with the new permutation of the company. Of course, the inevitable unravelling started quickly. The calls from Ben were full of unspoken anxiety and stress, you could almost feel him shrinking in the middle of the circle of wagons as he came under siege. Their accounts department dragged their feet, Ben’s budget was squeezed, customers started to leave them in droves. I would have to stop supplies until invoices were paid, never happened before. It turned out that the new owners were not interested in job creation, or investing for growth, they were not interested in the existing staff or the long history of the company. They had used lies to keep staff on board. The prize in their sights was the prime property the company owned which was right in the middle of an area of intense redevelopment for buy to let luxury apartments. Without telling anybody who would be affected they were running the company down for the cashflow whilst they got a developer on board, which they did. Within a year the company which had operated for 30 years was dead, no profit, no customers, redundancy notices handed out. The plaque on the swish new apartments should read RIP Dave, Ed & Nick LLP you served us well but well, we couldn’t be bothered with all that work malarkey and besides we made more money this way.

Bland Men Toxic Lies

I wrote this as one of the speeches to be delivered today by my friends at the Chester for Europe demo today 7th September 2019.

I watched some footage today of a bland faced politician being confronted by an angry French woman. With tears in her eyes and defiance in her heart, she explained to him exactly why she stood with a stop Brexit banner with her British friends. She has been in the UK for 21 years, longer than she lived in France. Her husband is British, as are her children.

The Bland Faced Man tried to present his Brexit as a difference of opinion, like you would discuss what you think about porridge or boiled eggs. The woman let rip and demonstrated the passion felt by every single person who has been adversely affected by that vote on June 23rd 2016.

5 million people denied a vote on their very futures remain unsure what will happen to them. Settled status means nothing certain and there is no protective legislation so a no-deal offers them nothing. The British in the EU likewise have little to go on beyond unilateral guarantees made in individual member states.

A friend of mine and her husband moved into her daughters spare room this week thanks to a job loss directly linked to Brexit. Her husband is struggling to find a new job, as an EU27 citizen combined with his area of expertise, Brexit is having an ongoing effect on his employment prospects. My friend said “I know I should be grateful I have somewhere to go but right now all I feel is anger and distress” The poor woman even feels guilty at feeling her justified and righteous anger.

I saw a man on twitter share his distress, the Coroner had confirmed worry about brexit was one of the factors in his EU27 citizens wife’s suicide.

Imagine that? Imagine having to live with that?

Politicians have created a divide. In our Families, in our communities, in our country. For what? What is so good about a future outside the EU? 3 years of asking this have never yet yielded a satisfactory answer from the bland men who sold us their lies in 2016. It’s unforgivable what they have done to our great nation.

And meanwhile, what of our cross border families? These people are YOUR friends, your colleagues, your neighbours, your own families. Our government cares not a jot about them. These people with no voice are OUR responsibility, Brexit has diminished their status from being less than equal and this is wrong. They have stood by our sides for all these years contributing to our communities. It’s now time for us to stand side by side with them.

Stop Brexit,

Equal Lives No Longer

This week has been full of turmoil. Boris Johnson and his special adviser, the unelected Dominic Cummings have engaged in a war of attrition against Johnson’s own party and summarily chucked out 21 MPs for voting against their plan.

They have pretended that the British Government is busy negotiating some kind of deal whilst the EU have confirmed that in fact nothing new has been put to them at all, in fact I don’t think anything has been put to them at all. As per the last 3 years the Tory government seeks only to negotiate with its own party and by extension the Brexit Party, in this, May and Johnson are the same though Johnson remarkably has been somewhat less successful having now fired his majority. There is something deliciously absurdly brexity about that particular act of foot shooting isn’t there?

As campaigners, we in the Remain Grassroots have been busy fighting the spectre of no deal. We must continue to do that. Although Parliament has successfully flexed its sovereignty muscles and pushed through the Benn Bill, there are still many holes in the road that we can fall through. It’s not inconceivable with a certain chain of events we could be back to facing another cliff edge. It all depends on the order of play.

Ideally we need Brexit to be settled first before we go into any multi issue general election. After all, if we are to have a general election just about brexit why not just have a referendum specifically addressing it? If we do go into a general election with Brexit as the central question we cannot stop debunking no-deal in the starkest and toughest way. So this aspect of our work, informing of the calamity of no-deal must be kept up regardless of the Benn Bill unless and until we know we are truly safe from it.

Having said all that on strategy, I have been reminded too, this week, of all the core reasons I started to campaign and they have not changed. I hate to quote Theresa but let me be clear, let there be no confusion. I reject all types of Brexit. The opportunity for bringing remainers along to a compromise passed 2 years ago. There has been no respect shown from Leave proponents for the lives and realities that people face. If within the first few weeks, months even, some attempt had been made to firstly immediately secure the rights of EU27 in the UK and British in Europe and secondly create a cross party commission to investigate and thrash out a workable approach which got broad agreement , our remain movement would never really have grown, Thats on the May Government and the No-dealers.

To turn the oft quoted phrase thrown at Remain back to the fence sitters and deal makers. We are where we are. You didn’t manage that, you did not successfully get parliamentary agreement on any deal. Three and a half years on and we are no closer to defining Brexit beyond the catastrophe of no-deal. We have wasted billions on fridges and lorry parks and ferry companies, we have neglected the domestic agenda and still nobody can better the terms of our current EU membership in any way whatsoever. Remember they said it would be better. Not worse.

But the contradictions of Brexit aside, the real cost of the last 3 years has been entirely emotional. Let’s start with the 5 million excluded from a referendum, the result of which was to impact their lives in the most personal and egregious way. As the promises on their security made pre referendum by the Leave campaigners who now sit in government where shredded on the floor of the House of Commons, their initial bafflement and mild concern has turned into fear and fury blistering fury and rightly so. They have been insulted and demonised and discriminated against. The settled status scheme is throwing out stupid decisions to people who have been here for decades. We see fresh new insane stories of filing cabinets full of ancient paperwork demanded so people can finally feel secure. I feel extremely worried of there being a scandal similar to windrush perpetrated on our EU27 friends. The hostile environment in the Home office is still alive and kicking as our friends from outside the EU will attest.

More fundamentally than the procedures imposed though, the enactment of the referendum result reduced the status of the 3 million. As EU members we are all equals under UK law. We were the same. The Leave voted turned EU27 citizens into people who are NO LONGER EQUAL. Their rights have been removed. They or their parents came here exercising treaty rights or came before that with indefinite leave to remain. They have now been told they must justify their presence in the UK. Their history by our sides in the UK has been downgraded in importance. Imagine having to justify your life?

The British in Europe face similar problems. In a way their issues are even worse because the removal of FOM also removes their right to move easily from their current residence to another EU27 country. For some this is already creating business and or employment problems. Whilst some individual governments have laid down laws to protect their British residents, others are looking to confirm reciprocal arrangements and cannot guarantee what will happen without a deal.

So many British are not clear exactly on their continuing rights to healthcare arrangements, pensions, exporting of benefits etc Nothing is certain. But again at the core the argument for me is that these rights have been removed by the British Government against their will. They are now less than equal to their neighbours in their country of residence. The EU can no longer protect them.

Remember in the early days the EU proposed in a document protections for the 5 million with reciprocity but the British refused to sign up to this and preferred to use their lives as chips in their political gaming.

What of the rest of us? Yes, we too are being stripped of rights to work and study and move around freely on the journey our lives may take us. Of course we will be able to try and jump through the immigration hoops that will be imposed on us instead of Free movement but we will be a third country. That means less experimentation, less access to opportunity. Why would an EU company hire a Brit as a member of a third country and mess about with visas and work permits when they are getting qualified applicants for the same job from 26 other countries. The best of the best (and the rich) will always get opportunities but the rest will just have another barrier to get over keeping them from their desired future.

Aha, but what about opportunity elsewhere in the world, I hear you ask. Well I don’t know about you but I haven’t exactly seen any countries coming along offering free movement to the British people in the last 3 years. You would think we would remember that.

We have stripped ourselves of rights and freedoms we previously had, it doesn’t matter if some individuals never exercised or benefited from those rights. I have never been arrested but I wouldn’t want to strip people of their right to a fair trial on the basis I never benefited from that. The point is I might one day, or my family or my friends or my children or my grandchildren. The Leave Vote has diminished our rights and so diminished the individual.

Which finally brings me to some of the minority of Labour people who still think there is something feasible about some kind of Brexit. What are you doing? You are supporting a policy which removes rights. This seems to me something totally alien to your movement? When did you stop supporting progressive enhancement of rights and start supporting removing rights? Get off the fence!

Brexit has divided families, communities neighbours at the deepest emotional level. Loss of rights and the real life consequences of that is felt so deeply by so many people that the anger and determination continues to build every day. This week we have seen the pressure that can be brought to bear with teamwork to stop no-deal. Forget fantasy deals. We are where we are, the public is moving to remain, the time for unicorns whether blue or red has passed. Imagine what can be done when our oppositions parties unite to fight the wrongs of 2016 and take the right steps to stop Brexit.