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After the National Council meeting I raced off to Hereford Racecourse to hand out Pride leaflets at Hereford Pride, which ran from 12.00-18.30.

At the after-party in the evening I was told there had been about 1,000 people there through the afternoon. There were still a hundred or more when I got there. I handed out a few dozen leaflets and had lots of interesting conversations.

Only one group said "No thank you, we're Leavers", while another group didn't want to engage because it was about politics. "I'm a politician", he said. "National or local", I asked, knowing he wasn't either of our Conservative Herefordshire MPs. "Local", he said, "but I don't think this is the right place for politics". I didn't argue: he was entitled to a day off at a Pride event although he should expect to be confronted by politics at every turn.

Anyway, everyone else conformed to EMUK's judgement that the LGBTQ+ community is essentially pro-EU and agreed that we needed to reverse the damage of Brexit. Many immediately scanned the QR code and had a look at the EM website.

My main pitch was to emphasise that we wanted more members to enable us to do more, so please join. Several people expressed positive interest but I don't know whether they will actually join or not. I didn't stand over them to insist.

This is the second Chair’s Update and the European Movement – our movement - continues to grow and expand, with lots of exciting developments coming up fast! 

Membership 

Again, a big welcome & thank you to the hundreds of new joiners! We now have a live counter on the join European Movement page so you can enjoy watching the growth there - and hopefully also help drive it by inviting family and friends. At the time of writing, we’re on 19,476 members.   

Especially in the light of Keir Starmer’s piece in The Express, many pro-Europeans are getting increasingly frustrated. They should all know that they have a large pro-rejoin cross-party community here in European Movement. Bring them in!  

Nothing can stop the sliding support for Brexit in the polls as shown beautifully in this graph below – nor stop commentators like Nigel Farage from saying “Brexit has failed” or Larry Summers, erstwhile US Treasury Secretary, giving damning inditements like “Brexit will be remembered as a historic economic error”. 

Such things are out of his hands – but very much in our hands to build upon. Take a look at the latest YouGov data: 

See also my interview with The London Economic on Farage’s “Brexit has failed” statement and what it means. 

Boom! Big surge in media capacity  

So then onto the front foot! Our members tell us they want to see us in the press more, that they want our profile bigger and better. So, we have acted on exactly that. 
 
I’m absolutely delighted with who we have joining the team this coming week. We have a new Head of Press! It’s a huge role, as it means we can finally start hitting rejoin messaging right into the heart of mainstream media. 

For too long, evidence of the dire state of Brexit has been met with frustration, claims that Brexit can be made to work, or can’t be made to work, but little more. It’s time to get beyond that and talk about our future where we ditch Brexit, join the EU and up our game as a European and global team player. Who is going to make that case? We are.  

And from now on, with our expanded media team with its new Head, we’ll be making sure that our opinions and reactions to Brexit, rejoin polling, *everything* will be driven into mainstream media commentary. We need European Movement to the go-to voice and be a household name – and so aggressively inserting ourselves into mainstream media will be a key part of that. 

The expansion (and there’s more to come!) of our press & media team is thanks to your funding via this crowdfunder and if you want even more media capacity, then please do chip in! Let’s build this into a formidable beast. 

Working with political parties 

European Movement is cross-party in its origins, culture and membership. We’ve now reached a size where we’re increasing our build-out into better working with all political parties – and, in particular, the pro-European groups associated with them. 

Not only are we of course working on plans for the conference season later this year (and let me remind you of the huge success of our packed out Gauke-Heseltine event at Conservative Conference last year!), but we are also lining up more events with groups from political parties. 

Last week, we hosted Stella Creasy MP and Labour Movement for Europe, who explained to our Labour members within EM what they could do to shape Labour’s policy on Europe – and we are planning other events with pro-European groups from other parties too. Watch this space! 

Trading away our farmers 

This week, two new post-Brexit trade deals came into force – one with New Zealand and one with Australia. It’s fair to say that they are fantastic deals. For New Zealand and Australia. Neither country can quite believe its luck.  

As New Zealand TV reported at the time, it was a huge win for them but devastation for UK farmers. Similarly, Australian TV has been mocking the UK over the deal by saying they import nothing from the UK but will be exporting vast quantities of beef. This is all made worse by the fact that George Eustice MP, who helped secure the UK-Aus deal, told the Commons six months ago that it was "not actually a very good deal for the UK". Making matters even worse are the revelations this week that in a dinner with then-PM Scott Morrison, Boris Johnson gave away far more in the UK-Aus trade deal than anyone had planned on. The “jaw-dropping” move left Liz Truss (then Trade Secretary) “livid” and officials were shocked – they then spent months trying to undo it but failed. Boris Johnson simply sold out the UK, our farmers in particular, over a bottle of red wine. 

To be blunt, this kind of sloppy negotiation work would never have happened if we’d been part of the EU negotiating these deals with the expert teams we built just for that purpose. In all the 50+ trade deals we negotiated as part of the EU, there was never anything remotely as foolish as this. And to anyone saying that we could never do deals with Australia or New Zealand within the EU – I merely present to you the EU-New Zealand Trade Agreement concluded in June 2022. Yes, the EU also negotiated a trade deal with New Zealand after Brexit – and you can bet that French farmers have not been screwed like British farmers were.  

More will clearly emerge on the actual impact of these trade deals, but at this stage I have to say that it seems almost amazing that the Brexit wagon has any more wheels to fall off it. 

Until next time,

Dr. Mike Galsworthy, June 2023

The sun shone and there was no wind to blow the gazebo around like last time in Hereford. Anyway, Mary Sinclair Powell, the Markets Officer, kindly lent us some of her weights in case of a strong gust of wind up Broad Street. Six H4EU members attended to talk to passers-by about their experience of Brexit and to encourage them both to take part in the opinion poll and to join the European Movement. About 53 people put their coloured dots or stars on the poll, including a number of EU visitors. There was a twinning event with 40 visitors from Betzdorf in Germany and so the Town Council was flying the German flag again. They were about to have a reception with the Mayor. There were a couple of Brexiteers - one gent actually said: "I am a Brexiteer". But the majority were angry about the lies told by government and hoped for a rapprochement with the EU (around 90%), though not all felt we would be able to rejoin. Some had property in Europe (Spain and France) to which they now couldn't retire. A few also admitted having voted to Leave and wished they hadn't now, but felt they hadn't been given the relevant information at the time. Some figures: on the question of how our country is getting on since Brexit, 92% said very badly or poorly on cost of living; 95% said the same about health & social care; 86% on businesses & farming; 89% on the music industry; 76% on the environment; and 88% on human rights & employment protection. 85% felt they'd have a better life if we were still an EU country, a whopping 92% were sure we'd been told lies about the benefits of Brexit, and 90% wanted a closer relationship with the EU in future. Attendance was around 20% higher than last time we were in Ross. People seemed more forthcoming, and less hesitant to be seen criticising the government than last time round. Afterwards we went for a very welcome drink at the King’s Head Hotel. The next street stall will be in Kington on Saturday 17 June from 1000-1300.

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Richard Jones and Ian Jones - no relation - of Herefordshire for Europe went to Hereford Sixth Form College on 12 May to talk to members of the College's debating society about the European Union. Richard opened by quoting President Zelensky at a joint press conference with Ursula von der Leyen in Kyiv on Tuesday, Europe Day: “Our efforts for a united Europe, for security and peace, need to be as strong as Russia’s desire to destroy our security, our freedom, our Europe”. Last week's New European had an article about protests in Georgia against the foreign agent draft law: "The protests were so extensive that the law was withdrawn, but the threat has not gone away. Georgia is meant to be on a path to EU integration, and that would involve moving towards a more open, western-oriented political culture. But that process faces powerful resistance." Both showed the political emphasis of the European project on peace and stability: Greece, Spain and Portugal weren't allowed to join the then EEC until they had replaced their military regimes with democratically elected governments in the 1970s.

Richard gave an account of the development of the EU, with reference to his own work on EU issues at various times in the FCO from 1978-2013. Ian added his own perspective as an economist during questions, which included the negative economic effect of Brexit; how to deal with anti-democratic tendencies in countries such as Hungary and Poland; and how the UK should position itself now.

It was a scramble to cover all of that in 50 minutes and we could have said much more. But it was a good opener and we are invited again. We also encouraged them to join YEM.

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