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Posts Tagged ‘Brexit’

Stronger In or Vote Leave: The view from a Labour party Brexiteer

17/05/2016, 04:41:41 PM

In the last in a series looking at the views of people from outside of the political bubble, on the EU referendum, Lucy Ashton gets the case for Brexit from a member of the Labour party

Lifelong Labour Party supporter and activist Michael Ord says voting to leave the EU is one of the hardest political decisions he has ever had to make.

“It’s not a decision that I want to make,” he says. “It’s would have been far easier to just plod on and follow the status quo but complacency over something that will shape all our futures is unacceptable.

“And for the record Nigel Farage is not my poster boy. I’m no Ukip fan or Ukipper – highly apt as their politics are fishy and stink.”

Michael’s mum was German so the family has close ties with the continent and he says it is a “very personal” decision for him.

“I have been subjected to racism and this resulted in me classing myself as European rather than British for a good portion of my early adulthood. So voting to leave the EU is something of a milestone decision in my life.”

Michael says Britain is floundering in an unwieldy organisation. “Britain is the second largest economy in the European Union yet our influence is somewhere further down that list.

“Our politicians have given up trying to become leaders within the group and because of this, our influence and our popularity with the EU is not strong enough.

“We will be left paying vast amounts of money to a body that hasn’t signed its books off in years and is becoming bigger and more bloated by the year.

“What started off as a trading agreement between a handful of countries and a means of discouraging us from going to war with each other has turned in to political leviathan.

“Swallowing up new countries that can barely afford to be in and who bring nothing to the table. The impending addition of Turkey does not delight me.”

He also believes the business arguments for staying do not add up either. “We are one of the foremost economies in the world, far larger than our geographic size would suggest, and there is no way that other countries would want to turn their backs on a market of our size.

“If we were free to trade without the constraints of the bloated EU we would fare better in the global economy.

“We would be free of the sluggish, slow moving and inward looking economy and be able to deal with whom we liked and deal however we liked.

“It is a chance for Britain to be more responsive to other markets and to exploit more opportunities. We will be leaner, faster and have more control over our actions.”

Lucy Ashton is a journalist and former Political Editor

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Stronger In or Vote Leave: The view from an expat

20/04/2016, 10:39:35 PM

In the sixth in a series looking at the views of people from outside of the political bubble, on the EU referendum, Lucy Ashton gets an expat’s perspective

Retiring to a place in the sun is a dream for many people and former West Yorkshireman Brian Cartledge has never looked back since moving to rural France a decade ago.

Brian, who worked for the Probation Service for 30 years, says he was burnt-out and needed to find some “peace, far from the madding crowd” with his wife Brenda.

“France, particularly rural France, offered a tranquility that was becoming much harder to find in Britain,” explains Brian, 69. “South West France offered health benefits both physical and psychological.”

Having experienced the European Union as both a Brit and an ex-pat, he firmly believes Britain should remain a part of it.

“I did vote back in the 1970s and I was one of the 67 per cent that voted to stay in the Common Market as it then was.

“I actually went along to hear Ted Heath speak on the matter, and remember Len Murray and the TUC trying to persuade us to get out.”

Brian will be eligible to vote in June’s referendum and says he will give a “resounding yes” to remaining in the EU, which he compares to a big family.

“Personally, life will become scarily difficult for Brenda and I, particularly from a financial perspective. For Britain, marginalisation will undoubtedly follow.

“We need to compete, be in the game. If you ain’t at the table, you don’t get your share and you can’t argue for more. We need to stay at the table and perhaps realise that ‘family’ is important, even though we don’t always get on. No man is an island.”

If Britain did leave the EU, Brian and Brenda would remain in France. “Nothing would persuade a return to live in the UK. If Brexit comes, we will throw ourselves on the mercy of the French, and hope for a reciprocal agreement to cover the ex-pats here, and the 600, 000 French said to be living in the UK.

“We are UK work and State pension dependant, so there are big concerns for us there. With 10 years here now, we may need to look at future citizenship. Who knows? Bloody Brexit,” he laughs.

For this couple, however their fellow Brits vote, they won’t be tempted back.

“We made the decision to sell-up quite easily, based on factors such as seriously high longevity in the area we have settled in, extremely low population density, and a pro-social ‘can-do’ attitude that abounds in most rural areas here.

“The weather was a big plus and we can both swear the French health service is the best we will ever wish to find.”

Lucy Ashton is a journalist and former Political Editor

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Remain needs to accept the Brexiteers have a point

13/04/2016, 03:33:46 PM

by Kevin Meagher

A referendum, by its very nature, is a straight choice. ‘I am right and the other side is wrong.’ Not just wrong in fact, but hilariously, pathetically wrong. So voters must choose Path A, that is to say, the route to salvation that I offer, because Path B leads straight to the gates of Hell.

So it will be with our forthcoming plebiscite on the European Union, where the public will be offered the stark choice of keeping us in, or letting us leave. For campaigners on either side of the debate, there can be no ambiguity. No room for even the merest, fleeting uncertainty as they make their case.

Yet, reasonable people are persuadable. They are willing to hear different points of view. Capable of crossing the demarcations of a stark, zero-sum political offer. Bookended by the true believers of either side, the British people retain their doubts about political panaceas of either kind.

So here’s a thought for Remainers. If voters are torn between the competing claims of the pro and anti-EU camps – perhaps recognising the validity of aspects of either side’s analysis – would it not be wise for campaigners to also accept that parts of the Brexiteers’ argument have merit as a means of persuading the poor, conflicted voter that your case transcends the usual referendum propaganda?

The weary cynicism that greets politicians’ claims to speak the objective, unsullied truth might be lessened by instead presenting a balanced, synthesised message to voters that treats them as reasonable people capable of making a reasoned choice between one less-than-perfect offer and another considerably-less-than-perfect offer.

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The hypocrisy of Brexiteers who moan about Project Fear is ridiculous

09/03/2016, 10:33:56 PM

by Samuel Dale

A few years ago I had an interesting lunch at the East India Club in Pall Mall.

I was a guest of then-Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom and was joined by Janice Atkinson, before she was an MEP.

It was an enjoyable meal and they were both good company.

But look at us now. Bloom was kicked out of UKIP just days later when he hit Channel 4’s Michael Crick over the head and called a room of women sluts.

Atkinson became an MEP but was expelled for expenses irregularities. She had also insulted a Thai constituent as a “ting tong”. She later apologised.

And me? A forlorn Blairite journalist in the era of hard left Corbynite dominance. All of us disgraced within our own parties!

Politically, I couldn’t be further from Atkinson and Bloom but they are not always wrong.

For example, at the said lunch Bloom told me that UKIP should support Scottish independence as so much of the SNP’s arguments resembled Ukip’s anti-EU points.

At the very least, Bloom opposed UKIP campaigning forcefully to keep the UK together.

He pointed out how easy it would be to brand them hypocrites when big business opposed an EU exit in the same way they opposed Scottish independence.

Godfrey, we don’t agree on much but you were right.

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Labour should see the bigger picture on the UK in the EU

22/02/2016, 10:27:58 AM

by Jonathan Todd

“In 1941 there were only a dozen democracies in the world. Today there are over a hundred. For four centuries prior to 1950, global gross domestic product (GDP) rose by less than 1 percent a year. Since 1950 it has risen by an average of 4 percent a year, and billions of people have been lifted out of poverty. The first half of the twentieth century saw two of the most destructive wars in the history of mankind, and in prior centuries war among the great powers was almost constant. But for the past sixty years no great powers have gone to war with one another.”

These, according to Robert Kagan, in a book published at about the same time as Obama’s second term began, with the clear intension of dissuading the president from stepping back from global leadership, are American fruits. Since then, Kim Jong-un and Putin, Syria and the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, have brought into question America’s global reach. Nonetheless, Obama has held the international institutions that have held sway throughout much of the period venerated by Kagan – EU, NATO, IMF, UN, World Bank – in as much reverence as any modern US president.

We have our discontents with globalisation (and these are justified, notwithstanding its gains, which, in Kagan’s historic sweep, are considerable, even unprecedented). We have our grumbles with Obama (but it is hard not to feel that he has made a sincere attempt to recalibrate American strategy and recraft international institutions for ongoing transition to a more multipolar world). None of these discontents and grumbles, however, justify a retreat to nineteenth century statecraft.

John Kerry bemoans Putin playing by “19^th century rules”, while Thomas Wright has chronicled Donald Trump’s “19^th century foreign policy”. Trump – like Nigel Farage and George Galloway – holds Putin in high regard. The feeling is mutual. The Russian leader has said of Trump that he is a, “really brilliant and talented person”.

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Britain’s EU referendum must be fought on the future

02/02/2016, 10:45:36 PM

by Callum Anderson

As David Cameron edges closer to a final agreement with the European Commission and the other 27 Member States, both Leave and Remain campaigns struggle to wrest control and momentum ahead of a possible plebiscite this summer.

Whenever the referendum takes place, Britons will have to make their biggest decision for more than a generation. One that should be definitive and non-reversible. One that will ultimately decide Britain’s place in the twenty-first century.

Opinion polls – if we still trust them – have been highly volatile and are likely to remain so, with challenges such as terrorism and the migrant crisis looming large.

It, of course, goes without saying that Britain Stronger In Europe, backed by organisations such as British Influence and Labour’s In for Britain, must continue to make a positive case for Britain’s membership in the EU and call out the myths spread by the Eurosceptics.

The economic benefits – jobs, trade and investment – must be messages unceasingly repeated to citizens on the doorstep.

Equally, as Jim Murphy articulated superbly last summer, Britons must be reminded that the EU has not only been a free-trade area but also responsible for one of the great moral triumphs of our time: the establishment of democracy and the rule of law in the south and east of Europe.

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SNP-backed Miliband or a return to the John Major years? Only the Lib Dems can stop it

22/04/2015, 05:44:47 PM

by Samuel Dale

He’s back. The most successful prime minister – nay politician – ever to grace British parliamentary democracy.

A man of such grace, skill and power that he swept all before him in his pomp. Adored by his own. Feared by rivals. Yesterday, he spoke and we – humble electorate – must heed his wise counsel.

I speak, of course, of Sir John Major. Well, that seems to be the absurd narrative pedalled by the electorally-charged right-wing press that once lampooned Major’s premiership. Times change. Major’s speech gave warning of the higher taxes, fewer jobs and general mayhem of a Labour government supported by the SNP.

Firstly, he’s right. A Labour/SNP deal would be a disaster for Britain and the Labour party as well.

There would be an economic chilling effect around new investment into the UK while the PLP would be split over any arrangement with the nationalists. In fact, I was warning about it on this blog before it was cool.

But, as many have pointed out, it was John Major’s Government in the 1990s that actually did deliver higher taxes, fewer jobs and general mayhem.

Look at the facts. There’s Black Wednesday, when a self-inflicted economic crisis pushed the Bank of England’s interest rates to a crushing 15% in September 1992.

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