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“What on earth do the strikes have to do with Brexit?” 

“What on earth do the strikes have to do with Brexit?” This was the question asked by Kevin O'Sullivan recently on Talk TV. 

Quite a lot, actually.  

Nowhere else in Europe are we seeing industrial action on such a scale. The UK has not seen industrial action like this since the winter of discontent in 1978-79. 

When it comes to industrial action in the UK, the closest we saw to current strike levels was in 2011 when we lost 1.39m working days (ONS). In 2022, by October we had already lost 1.617 million working days.   

Recent data published by the UK in a Changing Europe and Centre for European Reform thinktanks revealed that in September 2022, the UK economy lost 330,000 workers because of Brexit. 

The UK has 58,000 fewer nurses than if the numbers arriving before Brexit had continued.   

Brexit-induced migratory hurdles and poor wages have made Britain an unattractive destination for Europe’s nurses. The number of EU and EFTA (European Free Trade Association) nurses in the UK has decreased by 28% from 38,992 in September 2016 to 28,007 in September 2021, forcing the NHS to recruit from ‘red list’ countries to meet staff shortages, a report from Nuffield Trust suggests. 

It is no coincidence then that NHS staff, postal workers and bus drivers are feeling the pressure, they have lost hundreds of their colleagues to Brexit.  

Take bus drivers, we are in need of them across the country, with shortages increasing since Brexit. Many operators note they have numerous EU drivers who used to work for them, sometimes seasonally, who would like to continue to do so but are unable to because bus driving is not included in the Skilled Worker Visa list and bus drivers are not considered a “Shortage Occupation” by the UK Government. 

It also doesn’t help that remaining bus drivers are being asked to change careers and become HGV drivers to fill the gap in drivers since Brexit. HGV drivers get paid on average £40,000 more annually than bus drivers (North East Bylines). So, it is no surprise that bus drivers are striking on the grounds of pay and staff shortages. 

Clearly, the recent strikes are a symptom of post-Brexit politics, where wages in the UK are stagnating, prices are soaring, and we are short of labour. 

Brexit is a key factor in the ongoing strikes, but this is not being talked about. Our government does not want to acknowledge the impact that losing thousands of vital EU workers has had on our public services. 

Brexit has ravaged the UK economy, an economy completely dependent on EU workers, and this is making the cost-of-living crisis far worse than it should have been. 

Instead of talking honestly about the effects of Brexit on the UK economy and the labour market, they continue to peddle what the Financial Times is calling the ‘conspiracy of silence’ on Brexit. 

Just as the Brexiteer government seems determined to get rid of EU Laws that protect our standards through the Retained EU Law Bill. The same government seems determined to stop strikes, not through negotiation, but by changing the law. The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill 2023 has now replaced a 2022 Bill limited to ‘transport strikes’, reflecting a shift in ambition.  

According to the UK in a Changing Europe, “While new legislation might seem to offer the Brexiteer government an opportunity to ‘take back control’, the UK’s relationship with Europe continues to pose problems. They have claimed that the United Nations agency, the International Labour Organization (ILO), supports such measures and that they are applied in France, Italy and Spain. 

Whilst the government’s ‘Memorandum on European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)’ asserts that the Bill is compatible with Convention rights, closer examination shows that neither of these claims hold water. Instead, the reality is that the UK is in danger of breaching obligations under the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA).” 

Once again, the Brexiteer government does not have a plan for the negative implications caused by Brexit.  

Anna Bird, 

CEO, European Movement UK 

Let us know if you agree. Do you see the link between Brexit and the strikes? 

It was only a matter of time before the Government invited full-blown rebellion in its attempts to scrap standards and protections that originated in the European Union. MPs have finally woken up to what all this means for legislation we take for granted and what it will do to our environmental protections. 

As an architect of the EU Habitats Directive and former vice-chair of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee during my time as an MEP, I take a great interest in this Government’s commitment to protecting the environment. As Environment Secretary Therese Coffey said in reply to the Director General for Democracy at the Council of Europe, we should be “maintaining and, where possible improving, environmental standards and continue to deliver international obligations”. 

Today (17/01/23) I will be speaking at the Castle Environment Debate summarising the critical outcomes of the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in Montreal last month as they appear in the Kunming-Montreal Global Framework Agreement. 

This framework establishes a global commitment to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, protect 30% of global land and ocean, and restore 30% of degraded land by 2030. This a much-needed and welcome step to restore biodiversity across the globe. 

A link between climate goals and nature-based solutions is the key to a meaningful response to the climate emergency. The agreement brokered last month sets out a commitment to end human-induced-species extinctions of known threatened species by 2030. It establishes a new international fund to tackle the nature crisis and agrees to install a new multilateral system to share the benefits arising from the use of genetic information. 

And while global leaders take the steps required to answer the significant environmental challenges of our lifetime, the UK Government is threatening to weaken and diminish legislative protections and standards that originated from our time in the European Union. 

The Retained EU Law Bill, which will be debated in the House of Commons on Wednesday, gives ministers and civil servants unprecedented power to revoke and amend standards and regulations that we have taken for granted. 

Almost 4,000 individual pieces of legislation are at risk, nearly 1,000 of which are vital environmental and wildlife protections that my colleagues and I worked tirelessly to establish in the European Parliament. 

The Retained EU Law Bill proposes a ‘sunsetting’ mechanism meaning that these laws that have not been rewritten, amended, or retained by the end of 2023 will simply disappear. 

When Jacob Rees-Mogg first introduced the Bill, over 79 environmental organisations warned that this could put legal protections for 600 Areas of Special Conservation at risk. They create uncertainty for businesses, shatter long-term sustainability of our economy, and unleash environmental losses that could reduce the quality of life for millions of people here in the UK. 

Where is the Government’s consistency?

(Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA)

This Brexit-at-any-cost-Bill will run roughshod over critical EU-derived environmental measures already in the statute book. Vital protections such as the UK Habitat and Species Regulations – which are the legal underpinning of the Emerald Network, the ecological network made up of Areas of Special Conservation – will be crucial for the UK’s ability to deliver the agreement reached in Montreal last month. 

Of course, there is more that we can do, and I will go on record tomorrow calling for a package of specific, agreed scientific indicators to track our progress globally for the first time in history. We need legally binding requirements to report transparently and take stock every four years to ensure we remain on track. But this builds on the work of the United Kingdom championed during our time in the European Union. We must avoid undoing what we have already achieved. 

Key to all of this is closer cooperation with our friends in key European and international scientific bodies, not less! To achieve our global aims, the UK should rejoin bodies such as the European Environment Agency at the earliest possible opportunity. 

As part of their “Battle for the Soul of our Country”, I have supported the European Movement’s campaign to stop the Bill and instead call the Government to provide legal minimum standards guarantee for legislation affected by it. 

If this Government’s manifesto commitment to build “the most ambitious environmental program on Earth” has any truth to it whatsoever, it must protect those standards and kill the Retained EU Law Bill.

Stanley Johnson is an author, former MEP and environmental campaigner. In the run-up to the 2016 EU Referendum, he co-chaired Environmentalists for Europe with Baroness Barbara Young.

The last year was one of the most politically challenging of all my time in Westminster.  

We experienced the ideological zealotry of three Brexiteer prime ministers, we are in the midst of a cost-of-living scandal and our environmental protections are under unprecedented attack. These crises are no coincidence. They are all in part caused, or at the very least made worse, by Brexit.

Throughout 2022 we watched the Brexiteer government use every excuse from the pandemic to the war in Ukraine to hide our country’s economic and environmental woes. They tabled the disastrous Retained EU Law Bill which, if passed, could lead to the removal of over 4,000 EU laws that protect our environmental, food and safety standards, the Bill is about to enter a third reading, and last week we learned that the Bill could be delayed by the Lords.  

We have seen political leaders start a near Trade War with the Northern Ireland Protocol in its current form. All things that could have been prevented if voters had known the truth back in 2016. 

The mainstream political conversation continues to centre around ‘making Brexit work’, but, as I recently said at European Movement’s Big 4 event “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”. 

Ultimately, Brexit was a historic mistake and there is, still, no way to make it work. 

However, the good news is that public opinion is with us. Poll after poll is now showing that a majority of people realise Brexit was the wrong decision– 56% according to YouGov’s latest data.

We’re winning the argument with people up and down the country, but there’s still a lot of work for us to do before this translates into real action. So, as we enter a new year, it is more important than ever that we continue this work. This is because last year we began laying the groundwork to make this happen.   

In October 2022, I became a VP of European Movement UK, the only cross-party organisation with the courage and expertise to reverse the calamity of Brexit. As a VP of a pro-European organisation, and the only Green Party MP, I was also proud to see the Green party (at our most recent party conference) overwhelmingly vote in favour of rejoining the EU as soon as the political situation is favourable.  

However, reversing Brexit isn’t something that’s going to happen immediately – in fact, there are some big fights that lie ahead. Yet, there are strategic measures that can be taken in the short term to ensure that we reverse Brexit and return to Europe, such as:   

• Killing the Retained EU Law Bill;   
• Rejoining Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe;   
• Building European Movement’s Membership base, in order to;  
• Create stronger and more local branches of pro-European activists across the country.   

Over the next year we must ensure our precious standards are protected, keep Europe front and centre in the national conversation, and build political pressure to undo the damage of Brexit in the run-up to a general election. 

But, in order to do all this, we need a powerful movement behind us. This is why I urge you to join the movement leading the fight.  

Clearly, there are some big fights that lie ahead this year, but for the first time, I am feeling hopeful about our journey back to Europe, and I know that together we can reverse the calamity of Brexit.  

Thank you for all your support over the last year in making this a reality.  

Caroline Lucas MP,  

Vice President of European Movement UK 

This year we have seen four chancellors; three PMs; two Heads of State and one new ministerial position, Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency (currently vacant). With national economies and the EU recovering from the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis, Brexit has highlighted and exacerbated how vulnerable the UK economy is to weather these storms. 

Six years on from the referendum and Brexit is still nowhere near ‘done’.  

Meanwhile, European Movement UK has firmly established ourselves as the only organisation with the courage and resources to expose and reverse the calamity of Brexit. 

Despite the disastrous Brexit deal we are able to finish the year on an optimistic note (just look at recent polling). With support for rejoining the EU building, we are playing our part in reinforcing that and are able to look forward and into 2023 with optimism, focus and a pragmatic, deliverable vision. 

But first let's reflect on what everyone at European Movement – our grassroots groups, our members, staff and political ambassadors - have achieved over the last year in the fight to reverse the calamity of Brexit.  

Growth 

Here at EM UK, we have worked hard to assert our cross-party approach during the past year. In July 2022 the National Council approved the appointment of two new Vice Presidents – Caroline Lucas and Vince Cable – to add heavyweight cross-party political experience to our leadership, alongside Michael Heseltine, our President.  

As well as recruiting high-powered politicians to represent our movement this year, we are proud to say that we have grown our team and now have 15 staff located right across Britain. 

Together we work to design campaigns, boost membership engagement and organise events which combined will help us win the Battle for the Soul of our Country.  

The hard work of our new political leadership coupled with a growing team of staff has led to (at time of writing) 5,291 members joining our movement in 2022. 

Public opinion is shifting. Together we can reverse the calamity of Brexit.  

Campaigns

Our campaigns are rooted in exposing the lies of this Brexit government, and this year we ran several campaigns to fight for the Battle for the Soul of our Country:

Boris Johnson is going. Make Brexit go with him - £173,340 raised  

We saw 7,500 supporters donate a whopping £173,340 to our Brexit war chest to reverse the calamity of Brexit. We laid out to our supporters that although Boris Johnson may be going his legacy is still costing us and continues to cost us. In fact, Brexit is costing Britain £1 million per hour. Our rights are under threat. Brexit isn’t working. By donating to this campaign supporters have contributed to our investment in shifting public opinion, including polling, media monitoring, social media campaigns and the staff who lead this critical work.   

Stop the Trade War with Europe – 23,000 signatures  

This petition was a direct call on Rishi Sunak to admit that the Good Friday Agreement and Brexit are incompatible. We didn’t just receive signatures online for the ‘Trade War Petition’ but also designed and printed a complementary leaflet with a QR code linking to the petition, thousands of which have been delivered to local groups for activities throughout the year. 

As well as this we hired a van and used the Leave Campaign's tactics to demonstrate the disastrous effect a trade war would have on our country, taking the message straight to Westminster for the Brexit government to see.

Democracy, Freedom, and Peace in Europe – 19,000 signatures  

This statement united our supporters in denouncing Putin's invasion objectives to spread war, oppression, and authoritarianism. We encouraged our supporters to add their voice and speak up to protect our common European values of democracy. Here at EM UK we will continue to work hard in 2023 to promote peace in Europe.  

Brexit isn’t working – 15,000 signatures/stories 

We asked our supporters to give us examples of how Brexit is affecting you in local communities across the country. We presented this information as a Brexit Heat Map demonstrating which areas of the UK are the most affected by Brexit. It shows starkly that Brexit is nowhere near ‘done’. 

Save our Standards - 20,000 signatures and counting...  

Our most recent petition calls on the government to drop the Retained EU Law Bill and save our environmental, food quality and workers standards. 

Our specific demands are for the government to: 
 
• 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. 

We will continue to fight the Retained EU Law Bill into 2023. 

Erasmus+ and Horizon 

In 2022 we established a working group, in collaboration with the Erasmus+ Alliance, which features members and National Council members, which in 2023 will focus on establishing campaigns on Erasmus and Horizon. This is because an important first step towards eventually re-joining the EU is to re-join these educational powerhouses.  

 

Local groups and grassroots activities 

European Movement’s local groups network is growing in size and strength. In 2022, groups started to pick up their activity following a tough couple of years during the pandemic. 

Local campaigning 

Around a dozen groups across the country took the Heat Map campaign onto street stalls. With maps of their local area, it’s a great way to start conversations about how Brexit isn’t working and the real-world impact it has.  

Petitions are also a great way to get people talking. Our local groups always play a big part in increasing petition signatures and our most recent petitions have been no exception.  

As well as supporting national campaigns, our groups and branches have also been highlighting local issues and attending events in their regions. York for Europe’s ‘Poos in the Ouse’ campaign drew attention to sewage issues in their river, Berkshire for Europe were back at Reading Festival handing out stickers and recruiting young people and EUnity Seahaven borrowed the EM stall backdrop to attend the regional Labour conference. 

Building Bridges Fund 

For the past year, local groups have been able to apply for funding through our Building Bridges initiative. Groups can apply for up to £500 for activities that help to build bridges in their local communities. Thanks to this, we’ve seen an array of actions including a French school fête supported by Leeds for Europe, twinning activity in Wandsworth, Wales for Europe running a stall at Plaid Cymru party conference and a business survey in Swindon among others. 

Grassroot Summit 

In November, we held the Grassroots Summit in London (Birkbeck College, University of London), inviting local groups and key members to join us on the day. It was a fantastic opportunity to network with friends old and new to discuss current and upcoming campaigns. In all, around 200 people joined either in person or online. You can catch up with the action here. 

 

Events

Ukraine 

The National Council agreed in March 2022 that EM should divert resource towards supporting Ukraine in the face of Russian invasion so EM partnered with the Mayor of London to hold a mass vigil for Ukraine. According to figures from the Met Police, this went down as the 10th largest rally in UK history. 

Anna Bird shared the stage with Sadiq Kahn, David Lammy, Emma Thompson, Chair of the London Assembly, Andrew Boff, the President of the Trades Union Congress, Sue Fearns and Vitaly Klitschko, Mayor of Kyiv, beamed in via Zoom. 

After the event we also ran a series of member briefings on aspects of the war which sought to platform European voices and highlight the European response to the war and produced a practical action pack for local groups.  

We then went on to hold two briefing events, on the EU’s response to the war, and the refugee crisis. These events only further established the importance of working with our European neighbours in order to protect European values of democracy, peace and freedom.  

Party Conferences  

EM attended all the major party conferences in England throughout September and October and, thanks to our presence, we were able to build some excellent new relationships across all parties. During conference we:  

• Hosted 5 fringe events across the three main party conferences.  
• Broke the Brexit silence in the media. We were invited onto BBC Politics Live to challenge Labour over their 'Make Brexit Work' slogan and took our message directly to the doors of politicians at Labour and Conservative conferences. 
• Put Europe on the agenda of all the political parties. Our fringe with Labour Movement for Europe highlighted that there is no solution to the cost-of-living crisis without closer ties with Europe.
• Watched the Green Party pass a motion for the UK to rejoin the EU as soon as the political situation allows. During our fringe at the event we also laid out our step-by-step strategy for rejoining.
• Grew our movement. Our membership is now four times that of UKIP and we packed-out the house for our fringe event at Conservative conference. 

In 2023 we look forward to again attending all the major party conferences and strengthening our cross-party ties. We are also excited to engage members of the Liberal Democrats at their party conference in 2023 which was cancelled this year in line with the mourning period of Her Majesty the Queen II.

Big 4  

In November 2022 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 in 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 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. 

You can watch the full recording of the event here. 

 

Partnerships  

This year, the European Movement UK has deepened its partnerships with the Young European Movement (YEM), European Movement in Scotland (EMIS) and Wales for Europe. Reciprocal membership arrangements have most recently been made with Wales for Europe meaning members get the benefits of membership of both organisations, and in 2023 we hope to do the same for members in Scotland as well as for members of YEM.  

European Movement Scotland 

In June 2022, European Movement Scotland along with European Movement UK hosted an event with Michael Russell, Sarah Boyack MSP and Andrew Adonis. There was a great turnout of members and press both physically and virtually at the event and this contributed to strengthening the relationships between members of EMiS and EMUK.  

Young European Movement 

It has been an action-packed year for YEM UK. In April, YEM hosted BEYOND 2022, a three-day conference focusing on YEM’s contribution to the Conference on the Future of Europe, empowering young activists to champion a stronger Europe.  

As a stalwart supporter of Ukraine in its battling against Putin, YEM Manchester co-hosted an event with the Ukrainian Society where President Zelensky spoke virtually, while the organisation also participated in a separate march in solidary with Ukraine.  

In July, YEM hosted its first Climate Action Summer Academy in London, a three-day event tailored towards activists interested in maintaining the highest standards of environmental protection in the UK post-Brexit and empower them to champion this into the future.  

They also sought to charter a future back inside the European Union, and were delighted to participate in the Rejoin March which took place this October, where YEM President Julius Lajtha spoke on stage alongside a plethora of high-profile speakers. 

Wales for Europe 

With the launch of our new reciprocal membership scheme between both organisations, as well as joint funding for a membership and campaigns coordinator in Wales, the partnership between Wales for Europe and European Movement UK has become even stronger this year.  

Collaborative events such as the Erasmus+ webinar discussion, and a speaker event with Andrew Adonis, were successful and engaging. Wales for Europe have also had a wide range of events and activities this year, including speaker events with former Wales MEPs, a presence at the National Rejoin March alongside European Movement UK activists, a picnic event in Cardiff, and stalls at the Corwen Show and the Plaid Cymru autumn conference! 

Other pro-EU actions

National Rejoin March 

In October 2022 thousands of protestors in London marched urging the government to rebuild our relationship with Europe. The National Rejoin March demonstrated the strong, vibrant movement of people who are still committed to reclaiming our European future. The grassroots event was organised by a broad alliance of regional, local, and other pro-European groups. Many European Movement partners and local groups were in attendance, as well as EM colleagues Molly Scott Cato, Jackie Jones, Mike Galsworthy and Julius Lajtha, some of whom gave inspiring speeches. 

Leeds for Europe Petition  

In November 2022 Leeds for Europe started a government petition urging the “Government to hold a Public Inquiry into the impact of Brexit”. On December 5th, 2022, the government responded to the petition stating that “The UK’s departure from the EU was a democratic choice and the UK-EU institutions are functioning as intended. The Government does not believe this to be an appropriate subject for public inquiry”. 

However, this did not deter EM and since the government responded a further 20,000 people have signed the petition. If the petition reaches 100,000 the government will be forced to debate the petition. This is a prime example of the strength of local groups and the power we hold as an organisation.  

Sign the petition here 

The year ahead

This year has been difficult for everyone, with the political cost of Brexit clear for everyone to see.  

But through all of this we’ve been working hard, laying the groundwork, building up our leadership, getting out to conferences and growing our supporter list, all in order to bring us closer to winning the Battle for the Soul of our Country. 

2023 is going to be special. Public opinion is shifting, it is becoming clearer that we can’t make Brexit work!  

The success of 2022 was thanks to the contribution from our members and supporters so, if you haven’t already, join the movement today! 

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.