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The Chair of the European Movement, Lord Andrew Adonis, has resigned today [14/12/22], to devote more time to writing and other public interest initiatives. European Movement’s Vice Chair, Molly Scott Cato, will serve as interim Chair until a successor is elected. 

An unrivalled line-up including Lord Michael Heseltine (President), Sir Vince Cable (Vice President) and Caroline Lucas MP (Vice President) continue to lead its political direction. Its Chief Executive, Anna Bird, will continue leading the operational and day-to-day running of the Movement. 

Molly Scott Cato, Vice Chair of the European Movement, said: 

"I am disappointed by this news, but I would like to thank Andrew for his enormous contribution to the European Movement as our Chair. 

"Under Andrew’s leadership, the European Movement has accelerated our membership growth, reformed our governance and defined a clear strategy to campaign' Step by Step' to reverse the calamity of Brexit. 

"Andrew has been a passionate and committed voice for Europe his entire life, so I know he will continue contributing to our Movement. I look forward to campaigning alongside him for many years to come.  

"We are entering a critical stage in the Battle for the Soul of our Country. What we do now will define the pace of our route back to the EU. Our next Chair must be fully committed to that goal whilst continuing to build our Movement across the country. 

"We will shortly begin the task of recruiting a new Chair who, in accordance with our constitution, will be elected by our members." 

One of the European Movement’s local branches, Leeds for Europe, is continuing to push an online petition calling for a public inquiry into Brexit, undeterred by seeing the idea initially knocked back by the Government. 

The Government was obliged to answer the petition - We call upon the Government to hold a Public Inquiry into the impact of Brexit - published on the Parliament website after it gained 10,000 signatures in its first two days.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office responded on Monday, 5 December: 

The Foreign Office’s full response can be viewed online here.

Although the Government has given a response to the petition, it can still be signed and if it reaches 100,000 signatures within six months (by 18 May 2023) it will be considered for a parliamentary debate. It passed two-thirds of that figure on the same day the Government’s response was published. At time of writing, it is still the most popular petition on the Government's website, with just short of 80,000 signatures.

Richard Wilson, Chair of Leeds for Europe, said: “Disappointed, but not surprised, sums up our response. Our petition points out that ‘Brexit benefits’ promised have simply not been delivered. 

“Has ‘parliamentary scrutiny’ to date explained to voters why this is? It’s unlikely to do so while the main opposition Labour Party – its leader especially – continues to fight shy of confronting the challenge presented by Brexit.” 

The petition was the idea of Peter Packham, Treasurer of Leeds for Europe. He said: “Support for the petition so far has been tremendous and I am confident – without being complacent – that we’ll reach 100,000 signatures within a matter of weeks.” 

“Brexit is proving to be enormously damaging to Britain,” Peter continued, “Both Labour and the Conservatives need to admit why this is – and tell us what they’re going to do about it. Short of a public inquiry forcing them, I don’t currently see that happening.” 

“This petition is a perfect example of how EM’s Local Groups can make a real difference, not just by grabbing public attention but by taking the conversation directly to Parliament and forcing the Brexiteer Government to listen. 

“By signing this petition, and other petitions backed by European Movement, we can reverse the calamity of Brexit and win the Battle for the Soul of our Country.” 

Add your name here. 

European Movement is the only cross-party movement with the courage to take up the fight. We are working at all levels, from grassroots to Westminster, fundraising, marching, and speaking out to reverse the calamity of Brexit. 

Public opinion is swinging against Brexit as the evidence mounts of the negative economic effects and the absence of tangible benefits. 

For the army of committed Remainers, the foot-soldiers on the marches for a People’s Vote, there is mounting frustration that the generals remain silent. Keir Starmer, once a hero of the pro-Europeans, is insistent that the objective of a future Labour government is ‘to make Brexit work’, not to find a way back through some form of association agreement or to re-enter the Single Market. 

My party, the Liberal Democrats, have been a leading champion of British participation in European integration since Jo Grimond took up the cause over six decades ago. We have a thoughtful policy of step-by-step re-engagement with the EU, but you require an enhanced auditory range of a bat to hear anyone speaking up about it. 

I came face to face with these frustrated campaigners last week at a European Movement event when I was on a platform with Michael Heseltine, Caroline Lucas and Seb Dance. The audience had been fired up by reading a succession of opinion surveys which suggest that as many as 56% of the public see Brexit as a mistake and as few as 32% think it was the right thing to do (YouGov).

We, the speakers, were able to elaborate on the well-evidenced case that Brexit has diminished business investment, trade and income levels, aggravated inflation and failed to produce new opportunities of any quantifiable benefit. But, in my view, we struggled to offer a vision to match the title of the event: ‘Battle for the Soul of our Country.’ 

It is very clear that there is a tactical issue facing Labour in the pro-Brexit Red Wall seats and the Lib Dems in winnable but “Brexitty” seats in the West Country. Telling the public ‘You got it wrong’ isn’t the most seductive message for sceptical voters who still regard their Brexit allegiance as stronger than their party preference. Nor should we exaggerate the swing in sentiment. 

A BMG survey for The I Newspaper suggested that 14% of voters would switch from Brexit to Remain in a fresh referendum, whilst only 7% would go the other way. Although the swing is enough to change the referendum result — not that one is in prospect — it remains the case that 80% of Leavers would vote the same way and many see the vote as crucial to their identity.

So the issue is not so much about rejoining now but about then fact that, as the BMG found, that more voters are beginning to regret the current form of Brexit and would be willing to accept EU rules in return for better trade ties. 

Pro-EU politicians also know that in this argument there is little appreciation of nuance and shades of grey. The Lib Dems’ disastrous 2019 election campaign was due in part to the commitment to Revoke Brexit. The commitment may have been heavily caveated but in the hurly-burly of an election campaign what came across was a seemingly arrogant and undemocratic disregard for whatever the electorate wanted, even Remainers were put off.

Any pledge made now to rejoin (when circumstances permit) can and would be interpreted as rejoining tomorrow. Small wonder that the leaders are cautious. It is therefore imperative that the approach of pro-Europeans must be – as has been stated publicly by the Lib Dems and the Greens – to take a step-by-step approach. In this, the ‘Battle for the Soul of our Country’, we need to speak louder. 

The tacticians and campaign managers will also argue that it isn’t necessary to raise the divisive issue of Europe. The government is making a good job of self-destruction without it. Instead of Brexit, the electorate is, in any event, more concerned about the cost-of-living crisis, rising interest rates and the state of the NHS, all of which have a link to the Brexit arguments. But – in the eyes of many – this link seems to be indirect; only recently is this starting to change. 

By contrast, the government is struggling to explain what it has done in 12 years in government. For its supporters, ‘getting Brexit done’ is a landmark achievement (even if it isn't ‘done’ yet and is not working). What we must remember is that, currently, there are more supporters of Brexit than of the Conservative Party. Therefore, it makes no sense for opposition parties to call for rejoining straight away. This could help with a recruitment drive for this Brexit government by reconnecting them with many of their lost Brexit voters. 

If the role of opposition parties is simply to oppose and to campaign on government mistakes, then it makes perfect sense to keep quiet about Brexit. But the reality is that the complex issues which are involved in negotiating a new set of trade arrangements, based on a Swiss, Norwegian or a bespoke model, are best addressed when your party are in government, when the political landscape in Europe is clearer, rather than in opposition. 

In the meantime, there is plenty of useful opposition work to be done in parliament: embarrassing the government over its divisions; pointing out the folly of attempts to ditch the Northern Ireland Protocol; to scrap 3,800 (at time of writing) pieces of mostly benign and uncontroversial EU regulation in UK law; and to get Britain reclassified as ‘Asia-Pacific’ (to make our trade regime incompatible with the EU). 

But (and more buts) there is a danger of taking the Remain vote — now a majority and a large majority of younger voters — for granted. In Scotland and Wales there are Nationalist parties with a vocal and unambiguous commitment to restoring, at the very least, British membership of the Single Market and the Customs Union. 

By concentrating on the Blue Wall and the Red Wall, UK parties may be overlooking the importance of Hadrian’s Wall and Offa’s Dyke. If the Nationalists retain, or conceivably increase, their hold on Celtic Britain, it becomes more difficult to achieve a Labour overall majority or a Labour-Lib Dem majority. 

In addition, there is a strong anti-Brexit vote in London, parts of the South-East and the university towns. In these regions, a party which makes a strong pro-EU pitch might find that there are electoral rewards. 

Aside from narrow, short-term, electoral calculus, there is a deeper challenge to parties to define, in broad terms, their picture of the country’s identity and role in the world. The Labour Party was rescued from irrelevance when its leaders, especially under Blair and Brown, located Britain amongst the European Social Democracies. All the while the Lib Dems were long at ease with being European. No viable alternative has emerged in the UK since Brexit. 

In many ways the country appears lost, the latest research finds that a large majority felt that Brexit had diminished Britain’s standing in the world. There is little mileage in a Global Britain when the world is fragmenting into blocs and the party which champions the concept has its core support amongst inward-looking English nationalists. The big issue which this government has handled with real credit — the Ukraine War — revolves around Ukraine’s wish to be part of Europe (and a member of the EU) rather than Russia. 

The main UK opposition parties have to think about the institutional details of our relationship with the EU. But they have the opportunity — and a need — to brand themselves as unambiguously European, and shout about it. In the meantime the organisation leading the ‘Battle for the Soul of our Country’ and very effectively highlighting the disastrous consequences of Brexit is the European Movement, of which I am a proud Vice President. 

On Tuesday 29th November, European Movement UK hosted ‘The Battle for the Soul of our Country: In Conversation with the Big 4’. 150 of our members and esteemed guests joined us at The Magic Circle, London, along with around 1,000 more joining virtually to hear from Lord Michael Heseltine, Sir Vince Cable, Caroline Lucas MP and Former MEP for London, Seb Dance. Hosting the evening was LBC’s esteemed Sangita Myska.

The event promised an exploration of everything from Brexit to human rights, the economy to climate change, the progress we’ve made and the challenges we must still overcome, and it did not disappoint. The discussion ranged from immigration to the government's stance on Brexit, the relationship between still European and climate change with the cost-of-living crisis taking centre stage.  

The event was a celebration of European Movement UKs cross-party relationships, to demonstrate that, despite four of Britain’s most senior and respected politicians having differing views on a plethora of issues, they are all united in the view that Brexit isn’t working and that only together can we reverse the calamity of Brexit and win the Battle for the Soul of our Country.

Sangita started the evening by quoting the opening lines to Charles Dicken’s ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, using this to outline the lay of the land and discuss the worsening and terrible conditions facing people and families up and down the country with growing numbers having to turn to food banks and choosing between “heating and eating”.  

Sangita turned first to Michael Heseltine, asking whether we are living through the worst of times, or if the outlook for British people had been as bad during any other time during his career. 

Heseltine spoke about the winter of discontent, his confrontation with the miners and other frightening times in British history that occurred even before he started his time, but he stated that he’d never “seen anything like this”. Finishing by stating however that “It’s irrelevant to compare, what is worse or better, but that we must focus on what we do with our present predicament”.  

The conversation moved on to the general distrust amongst the public for politicians in the current climate. Sangita then asked if it’s a new phenomenon that politicians are seen as deceptive and untruthful. Lord Heseltine went on to say that this is nothing new and that politicians have always in some ways been despised.  

“We have a lonely job,” Heseltine said, “someone must make the decisions, we do the best we can, and we don’t always get it right, but the idea that there is something special about this day and age is simply not the case.”  

He then went onto say that in his experience politicians haven’t just been regarded with discontent but that “throughout history, if people are feeling hard pressed,” he continued, “they will desire change and, of course, this is where the Brexit disaster was born. People were fed up, frustrated, living standards had dropped, the future was uncertain, so people wanted to find an enemy in Brussels to get control of our country.”

The conversation then honed in on the question of Europe, with Sangita asking Vince if our current economic problems can all be blamed on the referendum. Vince stated that we have seen four major events occur over the last decade or so, citing “the financial crisis, the war in Ukraine, the Covid-19 Pandemic and Brexit”, and detailing how these events have put us in a “very bad place as a country both economically and psychologically, and that the country is rather lost with no obvious way forward” and (when it comes to Brexit) “we are a European country, but we are trying to pretend not to be”.  

Right now, Vince continued, “we must rely on our current politicians to stop it and to turn back the time but the stance from the opposition is to keep stum, they believe that in target seats there are a significant amount of Brexit voters who are uptight on the subject, who will be offended if we start talking about Europe again so there is a great reluctance from the opposition to talk about Europe despite the fact that polls are telling us that the public are moving quite heavily to regard Brexit as a big mistake”.  

This, somewhat unsurprisingly, brought the conversation towards Seb as a member of the opposition, with Sangita stating that Kier Starmer has pretty much ruled out rejoining the EU, a customs union and the single market, finishing by saying “he’s boxed himself in and he’ll come to regret that”.  

Seb said that the reason Labour are staying so quiet on Brexit is because “if you fight an election on something that looks as if it’s an old battle then you’re not on very good territory”.  

However, he did go onto say that, if you look at the trends in opinion polls, Brexit isn’t following the trajectory that people may have expected. Brexit isn’t simply “melting away” and “people haven’t just moved on”, and the reason this isn’t happening is because "Brexit is not a success, at every single turn, it is obvious now that there is something holding us back as a country and each walk of life that something is Brexit”.  

Seb finished with some optimistic words, stating “my strong advice to the European Movement is that politics is reactive, and politicians often react to the situation they find themselves in. So, keep going because you’re actually winning the argument in places where people talk about these things, online, in the supermarket, on the school run, people are beginning to have this conversation so keep going and I promise the politics will follow”.  

The conversation then turned to Caroline, with Sangita stating that as long as we have Rishi Sunak, a very committed Brexiteer, as PM and the opposition ruling out any idea that we may rejoin then it means the conversation may never happen.  

But Caroline reassured our audience that if the conversation is happening amongst the general public, then politicians will have to talk about it. She stated her utter disappointment that the leader of the opposition is trying to make Brexit work, proclaiming that it is “fundamentally dishonest, you cannot make Brexit work, you might be able to make it slightly less bad around the edges but the idea that you’re going to make it work is dishonest”.  

With the conversation having moved around the guests, it came back to Heseltine, who believes that Kier Starmer has made a huge mistake.  

Heseltine said that the opposition needs to remain in opposition, that “they should never overtly proclaim any policies, because if you have any good policies the government will pinch them and if you have policies that are bad, the government will have a field day at exposing them and diverting away from their own problems.”  

“What can we do,” he continued, echoing Seb, “is keep banging on. We didn’t need to be here tonight, but here we are, we must articulate, we must use every opportunity, we must try to lead people to do the same thing.”  

Heseltine finished by agreeing with Vince, Seb and Caroline, that the mood is changing but outlining to the audience why he can understand why the two major parties don’t want to raise the issue of Brexit. “The Conservatives are frightened that Brexit in the red wall seats of the north will be seen as going back to something they resented,” he commented, “but on the other hand, if you don’t do something about Brexit in the southern parts of the country you risk that the Lib Dems will come.”  

Vince was quick to respond to Heseltine, stating that the way we need to approach this is with a new mindset by saying “we are pro-Europe, we need to state all the things we identify with that are European, common values, common standards but we also need to outline that we are operating in a new different world, in a new environment.”  

“People like Nigel Farage,” Vince continued, “said the worst thing about Europe is that they were going to drag us into having a common defense policy, proclaiming that this is our ultimate loss of sovereignty but of course that is what we are now doing in the context of the Ukraine war.”  

He concluded that “To argue the pro-European case, we need to recognise we are a new country, that Europe is changing, what we are going to join is something different but still fundamentally important.”

Finishing on this somewhat optimistic note, and with a vision for the future from Vince, Sangita moved onto questions from our members and then from some members of the press.  

The Retained EU Law Bill is this Government’s first step to dismantling a swathe of regulations and standards protecting our environment, food quality and workers’ rights. 

This Bill – and a series of other measures set to follow – give government ministers free rein to demolish vital legal protections with no democratic oversight. 

In its current form, the Bill will – under a so-called ‘sunset clause’ - abolish all EU laws and standards still applicable in the UK unless Ministers intervene before 2023 to maintain or reform them. That means crippling uncertainties for businesses, workers, and consumers, causing chaos in the courts. 

Passing this Bill could lower UK goods and employment standards to well below EU levels and destroy our ability to trade with the EU, breaking the terms of the Brexit agreement and risking a trade war. 

The Retained EU Law Bill, introduced into parliament by Jacob Reese-Mogg MP when he was Business Secretary, is a key piece of Brexiteer legislation. It is an attempt by the architects of the Leave campaign to “get Brexit done” at all costs.  

The Leave campaign leaders have broken every one of their promises and this Government does not have the mandate to put British people’s rights, health, and safety at risk. Therefore, we need to step up to defend these protections. 

European Movement UK demands the government drop the Retained EU Law Bill and instead focus on protecting our rights. We want to see the government: 

• Provide a legally binding guarantee that they won’t slash our standards or drop EU laws which positively build on our established regulations and standards; 
• Commit to retaining or improving key legislation on wildlife protection, animal welfare, employment rights, environmental protections, food standards; 
• The government must engage openly and transparently with third-sector organisations that are raising concerns about the implications of divergence in these areas, and; 
• Remove clauses that allow Ministers to change the law without adequate democratic and parliamentary scrutiny. 

EU regulations are not perfect but are not ‘red tape’ either. They improve the quality of our everyday lives by protecting our rights as workers and consumers, our environment and wildlife and the quality of the food we eat. 

These EU laws were created with the support of governments of all political parties when the UK was in the EU. 

EU laws – that the Government now wants to dismantle – protect us in the workplace. They guarantee our paid holidays, reduce the gender pay gap and protect the rights of people on maternity and paternity leave. They limit the number of hours we are required to work and defend our rights if we face redundancy.  

Under the Government’s proposals, laws that protect our environment by helping tackle climate change, maintain biodiversity and keep air, water and beaches clean are all at risk.  

The EU has also halted the decline of animal populations like otters, dormice, and dolphins. They have established 286 conservation and protected areas across the UK, so our wildlife can thrive and have ended animal testing for cosmetics. 

The safety and quality of our food and hard-won progress on animal welfare are all under threat. If the Government is successful, laws which prevent the sale of American-style chlorinated chicken, prohibit growth hormone-injected meat and protect farming and agriculture will all be at risk.  

The graphic below identifies which government department will be affected, and by how many pieces of legislation. Concerns have already been raised to the committee in parliament that departments will not have the time to adequately assess legislation before the 2023 cliff edge deadline, meaning hundreds of laws could be at risk of being deleted from the statute book entirely without any democratic oversight.

Source: Northern Ireland Assembly. 

The Retained EU Law Bill Committee heard on the 8th of November 2022 that the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs has only three full-time members of staff tasked and assessing the impact of at least 570 laws that originated in the EU in that department alone.  

Not just is this bill undemocratic and gives unchecked power to ministers to do as they please it is also totally undeliverable and playing politics with key laws that impact us every day. 

The European Movement are committed to fighting this Bill every step of the way. But we need your help. 

Act now. 

Sign the petition. 

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For more on this, we recommend TLDR News UK’s video: Britain's (Pretty Bad) Plan to Delete all EU Law. 

European Movement UK is the only organisation with the courage and confidence to expose and reverse the calamity of Brexit.

Brexit and Devolution: More slogan than substance.

President of European Movement UK, Lord Michael Heseltine, has delivered the Heseltine Institute's Inaugural Lecture in The Tung Auditorium at the Yoko Ono Lennon Centre in Liverpool. Speech reads:

Tuesday November 15 2022 5.30 pm

A short time ago I argued that: ‘If Boris goes Brexit goes’. Johnson was not alone in souring our relationship with Europe. The Atlanticist prejudices of Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black using a power over our media that would never be granted to foreigners in other countries, the populism of Nigel Farage and Paul Dacre’s nationalistic editorship of the Daily Mail all contributed to the propagandist exploitation of the consequences that followed from the implementation of the EU single market.

The harmonisation of the rules and regulations that governed the European economies was one of Margaret Thatcher’s greatest achievements. To introduce one European regulation in place of 28 involved a constant flow of forms. The blame game began. Boris Johnson led the charge to Get Brexit Done.

Well, not quite. Brexit was never going to get done. Brexit was based on an undeliverable set of promises:

Get our country back

New trade deals

Bonfire of controls

End of wealth destroying regulations

Immigration controls

No border in Ireland

That was 2016.

Four Prime Ministers, four Trade Secretaries, five Foreign Secretaries, six Chancellors, six Chief Brexit negotiators and an oven-ready Brexit later, we can see the worthlessness of those promises. I must be fair. The impact of Covid and Ukraine has seriously prejudiced our living standards and those of the Western World. We hope that the worst of Covid is behind us.

The vaccine developed under the regulatory discipline of the European Medicines Agency was the first to achieve clinical approval. The agency which provided hundreds of jobs in London has now been transferred to Amsterdam because of Brexit Ukraine enjoys the support of the Western World, and to its credit we all appear ready to pay a high price for it.

However damaging to us now, the effect of covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine may be relatively short term. Brexit is not. It represents a permanent fracture of our relationship with our closest neighbours and our largest market.

It has led to queues in the hospitals and G.P.s waiting rooms, disruption to supply lines, increased prices and interest rates. It reduces our attraction as a gateway to one of the world’s largest markets and diminishes our ability to influence European decisions over great global challenges.

I followed every Conservative Prime Minister from Winston Churchill up to and including Theresa May in their support for our membership of Europe. You would expect me to be critical of Brexit but I am not alone. Recently the Daily Telegraph put the past six years into context. Under the headline “After six wasted years”.

Alistair Heath summarised the situation as follows:-

“It has been clear for years that our putrefying economy is in desperate need of shock therapy. Yet instead of addressing its many horrific pathologies, our ruling class, well served by the status quo, has stubbornly blocked radical surgery. The result has been catastrophic: Poland and Slovenia are catching up with us in terms of middle-class lifestyles, and our desperate young can’t afford to buy a home.

I quoted the first four words of the headline. Let me quote the whole headline. After six wasted years Truss is about to deliver a Brexit that actually works. The consequence of Liz Truss' seven weeks in office has an eloquence
beyond the finest oratory. Let me set out the reality of Brexit.

One pound sterling was worth 1.48 US dollars on 23 June 2016, the day of the referendum. The following day that value plummeted to 1.36 dollars. Yesterday a pound was buying 1.18 dollars. That amounts to a loss of over 20% of the pound’s value against the dollar since 2016. The pound has also lost over 12% of its value against the euro, falling from an exchange rate of over 1.30 before the referendum to 1.14 yesterday.

The London School of Economics has estimated that Brexit alone – before the effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine are accounted for - is responsible for a 6% rise in food prices. Put starkly, Brexit means that more people are unable to pay their mortgage or rent, are having to turn to food banks, or are unable to heat their homes.

The Resolution Foundation estimates that average real pay per UK worker will, by the end of the decade, be £470 lower each year - that’s a thousand pounds for an average couple. Normally, lower exchange rates have an important silver lining in that they make UK exports more affordable and increase their volume. But the signs are that – due to Brexit-induced trade barriers and red tape - this did not happen. Post-Brexit.

UK exports to the EU fell by 14% in 2021. The Centre for European Reform, has estimated that Brexit had, by the end of 2021, reduced trade in goods between the UK and the EU by 13.6% and left UK GDP 5.2% lower than it would have been had the UK stayed in the EU single market. The CER puts the Brexit hit to overall investment in the UK economy at 13.6%.

The Office for Budget Responsibility concluded that consequent upon the new trading relationship as set out in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement that came into effect on January 1 2021 British imports and exports would eventually be reduced by 15%. They further concluded that new trade deals with non-EU countries will not have a material impact on GDP. Little surprise that the Truss government did not consult them about the consequences of their budget.

I doubt if the government were consulted about the decision to build a new model of the Land Rover Defender in Slovakia. The queues in the Health service are of alarming proportions. The European doctors and nurses have gone home. The government is left trawling developing countries to replace them.

No one explained that a consequence of Brexit would be that our country - one of the world’s richest - would have to attract specialists trained by some of the world’s poorest.

The OECD in June of this year predicted that in 2023 the UK economic growth at nil would be the slowest in the G20 above only Russia. Three months later the dire energy crisis in Germany had a similar effect there. The three major credit rating agencies . crucial to UK’s borrowing costs - Moody’s, Fitch and S&P have this year all downgraded the outlook for the UK from stable to negative.

These are the judgements of independent organisations and markets and stand in stark contrast to the propaganda of Brexiteers. It was all too easy to promise a bonfire of red tape and demonise Brussels bureaucrats in a cynical exploitation of people’s anxieties and frustrations.

Only yesterday in the Times, Mark Littlewood, Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a pro Brexit think tank, wrote ‘Nowhere has the failure been so stark as in the strange story of the almost complete absence of a so-called Brexit dividend.’

The simple truth is that six years on, the only significant example of that bonfire has been to allow unlimited bankers’ bonuses. Regulation is the difference between civilisation and the jungle. We can all enthuse at David Attenborough’s brilliant depiction of life red in tooth and claw where the only law is survival of the fittest.

Regulations are the codes and standards that hold modern societies together. That is why whenever the government has sought to dilute or lower the standards they uphold, civilised bodies like The National Trust, The Wildlife Trust and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds protest at the legislative processes involved.

The Brexiteers told us new deals with faster growing markets would more than compensate for lost European trade. Six years’ later all but three of those new deals merely replicate those already negotiated by the EU. A deal with the United States has been scuppered by the government’s attempt to unilaterally override the Northern Ireland protocol.

India wants us to reverse our immigration controls as the price of a deal. There are new deals with Australia and New Zealand. The consequences for our farmers are so adverse that even a minister who helped negotiate it says the Australian deal is not good for the UK.

No wonder full implementation is delayed until the late 2030s! I am helped once again by the Sunday Telegraph - Jeremy Warner on October 30th. wrote “Brexit is irreversible, but we must strengthen economic ties with the EU”. I disagree with his irreversible gambit. Public opinion has already moved.

In October an IPSOS MORI Poll reported that 51% of the people thought that Brexit had damaged the economy whilst only 22% thought the opposite. Listen, however, to what Warner says about Brexit. He refers to Rishi Sunak’s commitment to building an economy that embraces the opportunities of Brexit.

He needs to get a move on and indeed articulate precisely what those opportunities are - for six years after Britain voted to leave the European Union all we’ve got to show for it so far is political, economic and financial chaos. From an economic perspective there has been zero payback and particularly in the area of international trade and reputation, considerable harm.

I do not accept that Brexit is irreversible.

The timescale may be unpredictable. The purpose is not.

We must start by rebuilding bridges.

We need a practical compromise over the Irish border that would restore devolved government.

We need to end the isolation of our scientists and researchers by rejoining the Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.

We should restore the right for our young people to participate in projects abroad under the EU’s Erasmus Plus programme.

In place of a Department for Exiting the EU we need a Minister with responsibility for Enhancing Relationships with the EU. That rescue operation could start with a veterinary agreement to reduce checks on food products entering the single market which would contribute to reducing tensions in Northern Ireland.

We should attack the restrictions on musicians and other UK service providers to work for short periods in the EU Each of the steps I have set out is realistic. Every step draws our self interests closer together.

The EU is still there, next door, with its market of 450 million people. We thrive only by working closely together. The question remains how to improve the governance of this country. Brexiteers said that Europe would disintegrate into its original nations.

The Euro was seen as the harbinger of civil war. The question today is whether the UK itself can survive. Sinn Fein is now the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Scots Nats use identical arguments to break up the United Kingdom that underlie the Brexit case.

We need radical change in the way we govern this country. Devolution must be based on a meaningful partnership between London and the rest of England. It calls for a practical sharing of power between Edinburgh and Cardiff and the very different parts of Scotland and Wales. I want to set out what I mean. We must end the misrepresentation of the roles of public and private sector.

They are interrelated and of crucial support to each other. Some essential services such as education and health are provided by both. Some publicly financed programmes, such as Research grants, lead directly to job creation .Many quangos such as the Arts Council, or the Lottery, are critical to the success of our cultural activities and prowess on the sports field.

We need to recognise the Civil Service for the hard working, dedicated incorruptible machinery of government that it is. The widespread appointment of political advisers has contributed to public cynicism. Special advisers should bring expertise to public life not party politics. My relationship with this City was, without doubt, the most rewarding political experience of my life.

It taught me that we are overcentralised and that the baronies of Whitehall are specialist in their responsibilities with inadequate coordination. My time here opened my eyes to the local consequences. On the backbenches after 1986 I gained a fuller understanding of other countries’ more effective models.

In 1968 the Redcliffe-Maud report on the structure of local government in England looked at the 1300 local authorities that had been created when the only means of travel was by foot or horse. His report recommended their replacement by sixty-two Unitary Authorities.

It was the right judgement except in the eyes of all those with a stake in the status quo. Peter Walker - I was his deputy - steered an uneasy compromise through the Conservative government to reduce it to some 300 authorities.

The Greater London Authority and City Councils presided over London and Metropolitan boroughs with a two tier structure, based on counties and districts, elsewhere. This was the ground over which, as SoS for the Department of Environment, I led the Conservatives in the municipal elections of 1978. Labour was in trouble in the Winter of Discontent.

Operation Cleansweep was intended to drive them from power. Only Durham resisted our advance. I am not proud of my decisions about the local government restructuring when I was first responsible after 1979.

They are defensible only against the background of the divisive climate of the time. I got rid of the Greater London authority and the Metro counties that I had, only ten years earlier,
helped to create.

I am however proud of the serendipitous collection of decisions related to Liverpool.

I agreed to continue the special partnership that my predecessor, Peter Shore, formed with the City.

I selected the banks of the Mersey for the site for an Urban Development Corporation.

I awarded Liverpool the first Garden Festival, to reclaim toxic land and turn it into attractive development opportunities.

Peter Walker had created a derelict land grant mechanism a decade earlier to eradicate the coal tips and ore extraction blemishes scattered over the countryside. The task largely completed, I used the grant to reclaim toxic urban sites for construction. Significantly I made the grant conditional on private sector partners developing the site.

Every pound of public money attracted private money.

The concept of gearing entered the political vocabulary. Human relationships evolved In place of the dialogue of the deaf from opposing mountain tops. Business people and officials became partners, enjoyed a drink together, developed friendships.

I listed the Albert Dock, an iconic part of Liverpool heritage that was thus saved from demolition. In 1981 several of our inner cities witnessed serious riots. Amongst the worst were here in Toxteth.

The maintenance of law and order is a fundamental of any Conservative conviction. I backed the police as they restored it. I felt, however, a personal responsibility. The riots happened on my watch. I thought I had begun a serious attempt to bring a new optimism to Liverpool.

I sought the Prime Minister’s agreement, instantly given, to leave the departmental routine to my very able colleagues Tom King and John Stanley whilst I was here. I held extensive meetings, talked to anyone with something to say, walked the streets, listened, and considered. My relationship with the city lasted until the end of 1982. It can be divided into three distinct phases.

For three days I listened. People were courteous but sceptical. You only came because of the riot. That was self-evidently true and I chose it as the title for my subsequent report to the Cabinet. There was one other clear impression.

Everyone had their idea of who was responsible for the riots. It was always someone else. Liverpool The ability to fund and make decisions lay in London and even there, there was no coordination of responsibility. There was no powerful local leadership.

The mood changed around day four. People began to ask "What are you going to do?” There was only one credible answer to that question however much it made a mockery of the concept of non-intervention associated with Mrs Thatcher’s government.

I spent the next couple of weeks preparing a list of ideas that, with the right determination, resource, and above all, local support could demonstrate a more optimistic destiny.

The third phase lasted eighteen months. The list was one thing but who could turn it into action. I am a practical man. Show me a problem. Show me the person in charge. No one was in charge. The answer was to turn a centralist, London based approach on its head.

I created a task force drawn locally from the public and private sector. Every Thursday the team would report progress. Every Friday I troubleshot the obstacles. We learned how to regenerate places.

We learnt that there are no short-term fixes. Creating and developing ideas, the processes of planning and consultation, land acquisition and contract negotiation have to happen before boots hit the ground. The joker in the pack, and the Treasury’s strongest card in opposing regeneration, is that it is often impossible to predict and cost its consequences.

If I had predicted Canary Wharf, Excel, City Airport in London or a major arena and conference centre, and contemporary shopping centre in Liverpool I would have been locked up.

The Development Corporation on the banks of the Mersey and its equivalent in London were my most important initiative in 1979. To understand why they succeeded it is important to look at their structure. They had a chairman, a chief executive and board-level representative of local stakeholders. They had planning powers, money to restore sites, improve infrastructure and acquire land - all essential characteristics.

They were thus able to reassure investors considering locating a new office, laboratory or factory that it was not going to be surrounded by sheds and that their staff would be safe and enjoy good communications with their workplace. Such Corporations transformed large parts of inner city Britain over the next fifty years.

Regeneration is usually led by the public sector. It has the resources to make derelict land competitive with green fields. Partnerships with Quangos, universities, government cultural and sporting programmes have endless potential to work with the private sector to create wealth.

Levelling up, however, will remain more slogan than policy until the government gives form. resource and structure to its devolution agenda. Examples from my early Liverpool experiences demonstrate the philosophy.

The preservation of the Albert Dock provided a home for the Tate of the North. The use of Derelict Land Grant persuaded Plessey and British Rail to create Wavertree Industrial Park. The Housing Corporation unlocked the development of the Anglican Cathedral Precinct. The Mersey Basin campaign was a major attack on urban pollution.

The recent decision by the Metro Mayor, Steve Rotheram to complete the job
can make Liverpool a world leader in an increasing global priority to raise the quality of urban water with huge environmental, leisure, tourist, sporting and the job creation that will flow.

In the early 1980’s Cantril Farm was the despair of Knowsley Council. The Abbey National Building Society and Barclays Bank created the now thriving Stockbridge Village Trust. The Tate and Lyle site, abandoned by the company, was transferred to English Estates. The Eldonians campaigned to renovate their area. In 1987 the project, incorporating owner occupied housing, won the Times/RIBA award as the most outstanding example of community enterprise in the UK.

A Merseyside Special Allocation fund to enable this was spread over three years and deducted from the Housing Corporation budget. Pilkingtons in St.Helens were faced with redundancies. Bill Humphries, set
up an advisory service to help those losing their jobs.

Step by step, this initiative led to the present Local Enterprise Partnerships of today. The urban fringe is often characterised by rubbish dumped by uncaring citizens. Groundwork UK was conceived in St Helens using volunteers to clean things up.. Today it is a federation of charities mobilising community action on poverty and the environment across the United Kingdom.

In 1990 I returned to the Department of the Environment for the third time. Ten years before, I had been preoccupied with the need to reclaim derelict land. The conversion of Cantril Farm into Stockbridge Village Trust gave me the confidence to tackle the human tragedy of urban slums.

City Challenge invited 30 local authorities to compete for one of only 10 packages of £35 million spread over 5 years to help them transform a slum estate. The idea of competition was highly controversial but right. The losers learnt from the winners in the second round. There were conditions.

The local Authority had to attract private or other public funds to add to the original offer. The project had to have a chief executive and a project team. Most importantly, the stakeholders, such as headteachers, social workers, the police and the tenants, had to be consulted.

One of the winning sites was here in Liverpool. I am grateful to Max Steinberg for the opportunity to study the historic documents he kept from his involvement at the time. The area covered 144 hectares within the eastern sector of the City Centre.

It links the centre with Everton, Granby/Toxteth and Cornwallis, with the campuses of the University, Polytechnic (now Liverpool John Moores University ), City Community
College and the Oxford Street, Myrtle Street and Catherine Street Hospitals.

Some 4000 people lived in the area, and there was a working population of 18,000. The project was timed for five years and in 1997 the European Institute of Urban Affairs was asked to report on the outcome. I quote its concluding paragraphs.

‘Liverpool City Challenge has exceeded its original output projects in 18 of the 19 areas of activity. There was underperformance in the number of dwellings transferred to owner occupation, due to limited progress in the Canning area.

However, we achieved:

23% more jobs were created than anticipated

282% extra business start-ups

14% more new or improved business and commercial floorspace

35% more reclaimed land

20% more apprenticeships

29% more Housing Association dwellings

105% more childcare places

The report concluded and I quote: "The achievements, whilst evidence of the success of the initiative, may also reflect the fact that targets were cautiously set initially, to make them achievable. Nevertheless, taken as a set of indicators for the performance of Liverpool City Challenge, they certainly demonstrate significant success in delivering the plan."

In Manchester, another City challenge was awarded. Richard Leese, Leader of the City Council, described Hulme City Challenge as the most important thing that has happened to Manchester over the past forty years. Virtually everything done since was with the skills, knowledge and ideas acquired through the City Challenge process.

Today it is called Levelling Up. In a sense even that slogan misleads. We are never going to create Mayfair in Middlesbrough. What we can do is to turn the vicious circle of decline, where the young leave, companies close, schools fail, and land lies deserted, into virtuous circles of hope where people stay, companies invest, and the environment attracts.

We know how to do it. The evidence is irrefutable. What is missing is a government determined to do it. After the 2010 election David Cameron invited me, together with Sir Terry Leahy, one of this City’s most distinguished citizens. to revisit my 1981 report ‘It took a riot’.

The contrast was stark. Liverpool was full of people with ideas and energy. Our task was to recommend the best and propose a framework within which to turn them into action. Our report - Rebalancing Britain: Policy or Slogan, published in October 2011 set out our recommendations.

A year later I published another report for the Prime Minister ‘No Stone Unturned in pursuit of Growth’. Uniting both these reports was the theme to give form and substance to devolution by creating powerful Mayors to lead the recovery of our cities.

George Osborne, as Chancellor, and Greg Clark, as the Minister responsible, began the first serious move in that direction after the Blair Government created a mayoralty in London in 2000. This is not a cry for increased Public Expenditure, although I believe markets would take a more benign view of borrowing if it was for investment and not consumption.

This is a cry to use existing public capital programmes to attract private expenditure. It is a policy to save public expenditure by replacing over 300 local authorities closer to the 62 designed fifty years ago. Scotland and Wales abolished District Authorities in the 1990s.

In England unitary counties Wiltshire, Dorset. Shropshire and Buckinghamshire for example, manage perfectly well without the waste, and duplication created by two tiers. We need to extend the local leadership provided by directly elected mayors.

The government should recreate the central pot of capital expenditure introduced by George Osborne and distribute long term funds, after consultation, to local partnerships depending on the quality of their plans reflecting the opportunities and problems in their very different locations.

We need to engage the remarkable reservoir of goodwill and cooperation that the Covid crisis revealed to be not far below the surface of our society.

It was a single honour for me to receive the Freedom of this City in 2012.

In looking forward then I concluded.

Liverpool is reasserting its place as a city recognised across a shrinking world as a place of culture, a font of enterprise, proud of itself, ambitious for its future.

Liverpudlians have done this.

Liverpudlians will build on this.

You must be clear.

Because you did. You can.

I would not change a word of it.

Lord Heseltine is President of European Movement UK.

Horizon Europe is the EU’s research and innovation programme. 

Worth EUR 95.5 billion over 7 years, it is the third biggest part of the EU budget, after agriculture and regional funding.  

The programme has many different components, ranging from funding under the European Research Council (ERC) for cutting edge projects, to European Innovation Council (EIC) support for ‘breakthrough innovation’ which is transforming advanced research into successful products. 

So, why do we need to rejoin Horizon? Here are three reasons why. 

1. Collaboration

Science is inherently collaborative. Success depends on identifying excellence from as wide a pool as possible and then bringing the best minds and the best facilities together, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. This works even better when you can do it effortlessly across borders.  

With Horizon Europe and its precursors, the beauty was that in order to collaborate internationally, whether between two countries or twenty, you only needed one application. This is because all EU Member States as well as Associated Countries had contributed to the same pot and system, making it easier to put together whatever collaborative combinations you like from this vast ecosystem of resources and skills. This is powerful. 

The unity of European science in the Horizon programme has allowed Europe-based researchers from around the world to conduct huge projects which lead their fields globally. It has made Europe not just cohesive on science, but an absolute science superpower. 

Before Brexit, between 2014 and 2016, UK organisations took part in more Horizon projects than organisations from any other Member State and we were the leading voice in setting the priorities and steering the Horizon programme politically, having been the engine behind setting up the hugely successful European Research Council grants. 

Horizon has helped the EU to compete with the US and China in science, something no single European country could ever do alone, which is why it is so important that we have a seat at the table.

Since Brexit the UK has lost its role in deciding how Horizon is conceived and implemented. Uncertainty over the future, with many threats of an imminent no-deal Brexit between 2016 and 2020, meant our participation in Horizon projects declined sharply – collaborations started to sputter and falter with Brits and their partners less willing to risk including UK institutions on projects.

By making cross-border scientific collaboration more uncertain and difficult, the UK is falling behind.

Rejoining Horizon Europe is by far the biggest factor for improving collaboration and for getting Britain back to being a full team player and team leader.  

2. Funding

The UK was once the leading scientific power in the EU and the leading beneficiary of the EU’s Horizon funding programme.  

In fact, as UK national science funds were stagnating in the austerity years, the EU was actually ramping up science funding – and UK institutions were direct beneficiaries of that funding growth. 

But as soon as the UK decided to leave the EU, uncertainty over the future meant its participation in Horizon projects declined sharply. As per our Scientists for EU analysis shown in the graph above, by December 2020, UK organisations had already lost out on £1.5 billion relative to Germany. 

In fact, we’d fallen to fifth place on the programme, just above the Netherlands (population 17.5 million). And that was all while we were still fully paying into the Horizon 2020 science programme!

The situation now is that we’ve signed up to Horizon Europe and budgeted for it, but have not yet properly entered the programme, a programme which started in 2021, due to ongoing disagreements over the Northern Ireland protocol. So, as a result, we’ve been left hanging and wasting more time, more valuable funding and more potential collaborative links.

And if you’re thinking “well, it’s our money, let’s just take it back and fund science ourselves, because we’d get more value from that”, then you’d be wrong. It is specifically the funding from pan-European high-prestige grants and multinational collaborations that we so often led that provided the extra value beyond national funding.

So, while the government has committed to doubling UK research funding to 2.4% of GDP by 2025, it has become clear that no domestic funding arrangements can adequately replace the unique added value lost when leaving Horizon Europe.

That is why the UK must rejoin Horizon. 

For UK organisations, if full association with Horizon is eventually achieved, in some ways the situation will be as it was pre-Brexit. Yes, we’ll be behind on many fronts and not in pole position, but our excellent researchers and institutions are likely to be in demand as partners and we can recover ground fast. 

3. Jobs

In June, it was reported that the European Research Council withdrew the grants of 115 researchers based in the UK, with a further 19 relocated outside of the UK, due to the ongoing failure of the UK to fully associate on Horizon Europe, due in turn to tensions over the NI Protocol.

Each of these grants typically means 1-2 million euros in funding, meaning hundreds of jobs.  

Here is an account of one of them - who lost a EUR 2.5M grant.

Incidentally, we also lost some 900 jobs when the European Medicines Agency (EMA) left London for Amsterdam – all because of Brexit.

Within a matter of weeks after the Brexit vote, our early survey of the science community showed people already turning down science jobs in the UK over Brexit. 

Across our universities and innovative businesses, the disruptions of Brexit have had a chilling effect on investment and ability to attract talent. And that impacts on jobs now and jobs in the future.

There is a “brain drain” happening right now – and so working with the EU to ensure the UK can return to Horizon Europe is imperative for boosting jobs, investment, preventing further brain drain and laying the foundations to rebuild Britain’s high-skill economy for the future.

The UK Needs to Rejoin Horizon. 

In short, since leaving the EU and consequently, through terrible diplomacy, Horizon has meant that opportunities to lead and coordinate scientific projects have become fewer, that EU funding for scientific research has declined and that the UK no longer has the expert involvement required for setting the policies for Horizon.

The only viable option for improving scientific collaboration, funding and opportunities here in the UK is to rejoin Horizon. Brexit will still have caused enormous damage to the sectors involved, both in general and specifically as regards participation in Horizon, but rejoining can help us once again collaborate successfully with our European partners.

Of course, rejoining Horizon does not come without difficulties. As long as issues over the Northern Ireland Protocol remains unresolved, the UK will continue to be excluded from the £84 billion Horizon Europe funding programme. 

The EU’s lack of trust in the UK’s reliability on contractual agreements is understandable, but we desperately hope that negotiators can find a way forward. It is vastly under-appreciated just how critical this issue is to UK science - and how much of a key driver of our future economy this is.

My advice to the government is to stop its anger at Brussels, honour its own commitments and – as a top priority - get the UK back into the world-class European science team we once led because, right now, scientists and researchers are suffering.

Dr Mike Galsworthy, founder of Scientists for EU and ambassador for European Movement UK 

Public opinion is shifting, and the media are starting to talk seriously about how badly Brexit is affecting the UK economy. 

With over 4 million views already, the new film from the FT – The Brexit effect: how leaving the EU hit the UK – is a landmark investigation into how Brexit has affected the UK economy. This in-depth film demonstrates just how badly Brexit is hurting the UK economy.  

“Six years after the UK voted to leave,” writes the FT, “the effect has become clear. In this film, senior FT writers and British businesspeople examine how Brexit hit the UK economy, the political conspiracy of silence, and why there has not yet been a convincing case for a 'Brexit dividend'.” 

In the film, the FT examines how Brexit hit wages, made imports more expensive and, as exports didn’t become more price competitive, “The immediate cost (of Brexit) was about £870 per household.” All whilst “Business investment has been growing in all G7 countries, except in the UK.” 

On top of this, Brits now have the worst access to healthcare in Europe and the UK is forecast to have the lowest economic growth of any major economy aside from Russia. 

This is why we are ramping-up our efforts to reverse the calamity of Brexit and rebuild the UK’s economy through restoring our relationship with Europe. Step-by-step we will make this happen. 

In the film, we hear from numerous small business-owners whose companies have been severely impacted by Brexit – such as husband and wife team Rob and Vicky Walker (co-founders of Little Star Jewellery) and Kiran Tawadey (founder of Hampstead Tea Company).  

Kiran told of how “The reality was that January to June (2021) we couldn’t ship anything to the EU, nothing... and we were treated as a third country.” 

Whilst Vicky spoke about “We were doing really well in The Netherlands and in Spain. All of that has just disappeared.” 

This, from the @FT. 🇪🇺 pic.twitter.com/fGoVf4xVyp

— European Movement UK (@euromove) October 21, 2022

With the reality that the ‘Majority of Brits now regret Brexit’, now – more than ever - we want to hear from you.

We are working step-by-step to reverse the calamity of Brexit and campaigning for the UK to rejoin the EU when the political conditions are right. We are strictly cross-party and represent voices from across the political spectrum. As such, testimonials are crucial to shaping our campaign work. 

Do you have a similar story? If so, get in touch and let us know your Brexit story at [email protected]. Your words help to build a more accurate picture of how Brexit is affecting the UK, sector by sector, region by region and home by home.  

This way we can keep bringing together the evidence that Brexit isn't working. 

Only together can we reverse this calamity.