This month we asked 5 former MEPs, and previous contributors to Bremainers Ask, to give us their take on the current state of British politics and Brexit. This is what they had to say ……

Catherine Bearder – former LibDem MEP & leader of the LibDems in the EU

Now semi-retired, Catherine is active as a board member for the International Fund for Animal Welfare and

Unlock Democracy. She maintains strong connections to the Liberal Democrats, having recently been

elected Chair of the South Central region.

As MEPs many of us worked to stop or reverse Brexit. We would often say, “This is like a slow car crash. We can see the brick wall coming”. We tried so hard to stop it, but we lost and Brexit came about.

So, as Brexit unfolds two years on, I am changing my mind about it being a car crash. Not about Brexit, that will always be a disaster, but that it is actually not a car crash, more a nightmare journey.

Brexit feels to me much more like a lurch off the road onto an uncharted dirt track in what was once a smart, well-maintained car. We had all been journeying along together on the EU autobahn. We were sure of the road ahead and the benefits it would bring. So, our European colleagues and friends stayed on the sensible autobahn, they may have the odd near miss, but generally their direction is organised and safe, whilst we in Britain have turned off into the unknown. Our driver, Uncle Boris, shouts that he knows what’s best for us all, and that this is a great short cut to the sunlit uplands that he promised.

We all got caught in the storm of Covid, we Brits on our dirt track and the Europeans on the autobahn, just as we will be caught in the storm of climate change, but I’m pretty sure I know who will recover better and quicker and have a safer journey.

Little old UK will keep hitting potholes, the springs will break and the journey will become more and more unpleasant. Some of our passengers, Aunty Scotland and Cousin Ulster, may insist on getting out and running back to the EU autobahnto hitch a lift with others. But as long as Uncle Boris, Aunty Liz and their chums are controlling our car we will get slower and take longer to recover from Covid, and we will all be left hoping that the wheels won’t actually fall off, which will leave us stranded.

So, like so many others, I stopped being at the heart of Brexit at the point of Brexit. Like so many others I have been told to stay at home and stay safe.  I’ve felt so frustrated with only Twitter, Zoom and Netflix for company. I felt more and more powerless to help those that I know will be affected by Brexit, those Europeans who chose to live elsewhere and who still find their futures drastically affected, those young people whose opportunities have been reduced, those businesses who now find their costs skyrocketing due to the extra costs that Brexit has brought.

But I’m not defeated, as campaigning slowly starts to happen face-to-face again. I know we need to keep fighting to regain our place in the EU, and that’s what I will do. I believe we will do this in stages. By rejoining Erasmus and, gradually, the multitude of agencies, finally the Customs Union and Single Market, and by reforming our own democracy, till eventually we can ask, very, very nicely, if we can return.

There is a slipway back onto that safer, sensible EU road a way down this dirt track, we just need to watch for the signs and make sure that we have a different driver who has the sense to take us all back onto that EU road.

After nearly four years of fighting Brexit, I came back to the UK utterly exhausted and incredibly sad. Ever since the referendum result, I have been wondering how the lies would unravel and what the damage would be to our politics. The past few years have demonstrated that clearly.

I have to confess that having been completely focused on my work as an MEP and making really important changes in terms of policy on climate, sustainable finance and other issues dear to my heart, it was very difficult to think of the best way to work in the interests of my country.

I chose to join the European Movement as the organisation most likely to lead us back into EU membership. But as many of us have found over the years, it is an organisation that has not lived up to its past glories and has been in urgent need of change. I’m proud to say I’m part of that change now, having been elected as vice chair shortly before Christmas.

I was also asked by the chair, Andrew Adonis, to conduct a diversity review to make sure that the European Movement truly represents the society that we will be when we re-join the EU. We have changed our constitution so that we have guaranteed that women and people of colour will be fairly represented in the organisation, and we are now expanding to become the mass movement we need to be to campaign for rejoin.

Brexit was such a painful process for the UK that many people have buried the memory and don’t want to think about it anymore, even though surveys show that more and more people recognise that they have not seen the benefits they were promised. Others, like the fisherman and farmers I represented in the South West, have seen the destruction to their livelihoods that the Remain campaign said was an inevitable consequence of leaving the single market.

The collapse of the Johnson regime under the weight of its own lies changes the rules of the game with regard to Brexit. First as a journalist and then as a politician, Johnson used lies about the EU as his stock in trade. The Brexiteers would not have won the referendum without Johnson as liar-in-chief. Now that he is revealed as a charlatan and a liar, it is time to reopen the question of whether the decision to leave the EU was the right one for the country.

Richard Corbett – former Labour Party MEP & leader of the Labour Party in the EU

Richard is currently representing the European Parliament in the secretariat of the Conference on the Future of Europe.

Historically, British public opinion has sometimes shifted radically against something of great national importance that initially it supported: think of the 1938 Munich Agreement, the 1956 Suez fiasco or the 2003 intervention in Iraq.

What they have in common is that the assurances that were given – that they were the best course of action, relatively easy, and without negative consequences for Britain – proved to be completely wrong, with the public constantly and visibly reminded of that as subsequent events unfolded.

Might that happen with Brexit? After all, there is a similar gradual realisation that the promised sunlit uplands are not appearing, with new evidence and examples emerging every month to rub it in. On top of that, it is perhaps even clearer in the case of Brexit than in the aforementioned cases that its advocates were deliberately misleading the public – indeed blatantly lying to them.

Already, public opinion has not done what many had expected, namely, to rally behind the decision to leave the EU. Both following the referendum result (when many Remainer politicians, including the entire leadership of both main parties, declared that the result had to be accepted, despite its narrowness and questions about how it was secured) and again following actual departure from the EU, opinion has not rallied behind the decision but edged the other way. It has done so despite no prominent serving politician (in England at least) arguing the case anymore and despite the overwhelmingly pro-Brexit media.

The demographics of public support are also favourable, with younger generations being particularly unconvinced by Brexit.

As the drip, drip, drip of negative impacts continues, it is likely that opinion will continue to shift in that direction. And if prominent opposition politicians decide that there is mileage in this and start actually making the case that Brexit was a national error, then there is every chance that it will become the received wisdom.

When that happens, it will make things easier for a future Prime Minister to set Britain on a course to rebuild our fractured relations with our neighbours, repair the damage of Brexit and ultimately take back our lost seat in the EU.

Happy New Year! It seems astonishing that two years have already passed since that fateful day when Britain finally, and much for the worse, left the EU. I will never forget the days of grim inevitability in between the General Election of 2019 and the final exit date, as the cadre of pro-EU British MEPs attempted to carry on their function of scrutinising European legislation whilst simultaneously trying to manage the fact that our entire worldview – indeed our very professional purpose – had just collapsed.

I will also never forget the huge warmth and solidarity from the many, many colleagues from the other 27 member states and from across the political spectrum. We might have just been made redundant by the electorate but we had never been made to feel more welcome by our friends.

Since then, everything has changed, but so too has nothing. Everything in the sense that all of our worlds have been turned upside down. Like everyone else we have been largely confined to our homes to keep the pandemic at bay. It’s quite a contrast from travelling twice a week to and from Brussels and Strasbourg. I was lucky in that I managed to have the foresight to book a long holiday just after we left. Little did I know it was to be my last long journey for a while!

But in many ways, nothing has changed at all. The government is still pretending it signed a completely different deal to the one we all fought very hard. They continue to deny the impact of Brexit on the UK’s place in the world, its economy, or its citizens. Their new tactic appears to be to not even mention it, in the hope that the raft of problems it throws up can be blamed on something else entirely. This is our biggest contemporary political challenge.

I’m looking forward to a new chapter in my life. I will shortly become the new Deputy Mayor of London for Transport; a role which I am honoured to be asked to fulfil. I still believe London to be the best place in the world, and I want to do all I can to keep it that way.

In whatever path we choose for ourselves, pro-Europeans must keep the pressure up in the UK and across the EU. We are only scratching the surface of Brexit’s impact on peoples’ lives and, once the effects of the pandemic become less immediate, the impact of Brexit will hit harder. If the Brexiters’ plan to ignore it succeeds, we will have no explanation for people as to why life is getting harder, and we will have no concrete solutions to offer them.

There is nothing inevitable about Britain staying out of the EU, just as there was nothing inevitable about Britain staying in. If we are serious about finding proper solutions to real problems then we will have no choice but to confront the reality of Brexit. I’m frustrated by the apparent lack of willingness to do that in the UK, but I also believe in the inherent unsustainability of nonsense. Sure, it might seem superficially attractive at first. But anything built on lies and subterfuge will – like a house of cards – come tumbling down eventually.

Julie Ward – former Labour Party MEP

Over the past two years, Julie has continued to support pro-EU groups at home and abroad, and campaigns for electoral reform. She is on the board of Culture Action Europe and is Arts Lead on an education project for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.  She is also a director of the UK’s national festival of sustainability, the Festival of Thrift. Julie is actively involved in climate change campaigns, such as Culture Declares Emergency, and is co-founder of a campaign to close down a abhorrent detention centre for female asylum seekers in County Durham.

The effects of a hard-right Tory Brexit have been largely masked by Covid. However, the Office for Budget Responsibility stated that Brexit will be responsible for a 4% reduction in GDP with the pandemic adding a further 2% to this sorry statistic. As usual, the poorest will pay the greatest price, with household costs set to rise astronomically in the coming months.

Roaming charges are being reinstated by most mobile phone providers and supply chains have been affected by the introduction of new customs checks. Meanwhile young people are denied the freedom to live, work and study across the EU, with the loss of Erasmus+ being perhaps the meanest act of betrayal by Boris Johnson’s government. The Turing Scheme is a miserable replacement which fails to deliver an equivalent breadth of benefits. In true Tory style the contract for managing Turing has just been outsourced to private company Capita, who were responsible for huge defence, education, health and benefits administration failures, including the cervical cancer screening scandal.

‘Get Brexit Done’ was a simplistic, populist slogan that appealed to a weary citizenry but Brexit is far from done, and ongoing spats between the UK and EU regarding the Northern Ireland protocol demonstrate the limits for wiggle room in a rules-based world. I knew it would all come down to dead meat, and the so-called ‘sausage wars’ were a point in case. However, the EU is an honest if pedantic broker, whereas successive UK Brexit ministers have all played fast and loose with the law. Lord Frost couldn’t be bothered to turn up to parliamentary committee meetings to give an account of his (lack of) progress regarding touring visas for musicians, and Liz Truss seems to have conveniently forgotten all the reasons why she backed the Remain campaign.

We are in a sorry state and have become the laughing stock of the world. Far from being ‘world leading’, we are verging on becoming a failed state. Our PM is an acknowledged serial liar funded by Russian oligarchs and climate-change deniers, now at war with his own party. By the time you read this we may know the results of Sue Gray’s enquiry into Downing Street parties. Johnson might even be forced to give up the premiership but, as Jonathan Freedland recently wrote in the Guardian, the Conservative Party is infected by a virus called Brexit.

Despite this catalogue of disasters, I remain hopeful that the next generation will rise to the challenge of rehabilitating our once-great country, using campaigning skills learned from #FridaysForFuture and taking us back to the heart of Europe where we belong.

Clive Carter: Do you think we will ever rejoin the EU?

Yes, but it could take many years, maybe a decade or more. There would need to be deep reforms in the UK first, constitutionally, attitudinally, and structurally. Constitutionally, for example, we still have an unelected second chamber, and whilst we managed to join the European Community with that in 1973, it may not be acceptable to a more modern, more democratic EU some 50 years later. Attitudinally, Britain needs to fully understand the EU project, but more: it needs to embrace it, even hug it. That is possible, I think, but only after an effective long-term awareness campaign to properly explain about the EU, that this country has never had before (at least, not since the 1975 referendum). Structurally, because Brexit was caused by many people in Britain feeling forgotten and poor, living in undeveloped areas of Britain that are forgotten and poor. That needs to be remedied before there can be any rejoining of the EU, because being in the EU never caused those problems, so of course, rejoining the EU won’t fix them. Today’s Britain I doubt could rejoin, but a reformed, changed Britain of tomorrow I think could and will.

Ruth Woodhouse:How important to our fight against Brexit is campaigning for proportional representation ahead of the next election? 

Neither the Tories, nor Labour, support proportional representation, but I think it is important to campaign for it. Most democratic countries around the world – and in Europe – now use proportional voting systems. Apart from the authoritarian state of Belarus, the UK stands alone as the only country in Europe that exclusively uses the outdated, one-person-takes-all ‘First Past the Post’ system for general and local elections. Other European countries use a system of proportional representation or a mixture of both systems. In the UK our system of voting is demonstrably unfair. Only a minority of the electorate positively voted for Brexit, yet we still went ahead with it. In the 2019 general election, the Tories won their 80-seat majority with the support of less than 30% of all those entitled to vote. This has resulted in a Brexit, and a government, that is not representative of the nation.But a party that supports PR must first win power without PR. That’s the challenge.

Deborah Beth: How can we get the real effects of Brexit, i.e. the news items we see highlighted on this and similar Facebook sites, into mainstream news? My Brexit voting relatives only watch mainstream tv news and read right-wing newspapers so think all is going to be fine! 

Any campaign to rejoin the EU would have to win despite the biased news against the EU, and not lose because of it. That’s the challenge, and it’s a huge one. It is possible, however, that the media could change their anti-EU reporting if they can see a significant shift in attitude among the public towards the EU. Newspapers are in the business of selling papers. It may be more about commercial principles than political ones.For example, the remain-supporting Daily Mirror, and the Brexit-supporting Daily Express, are owned by the same company. I have no idea what the company itself thinks about Brexit, but it may be that they are simply selling to market segments. If Rejoiners could get organised and join forces (for the first time) to launch a truly effective national awareness campaign to change the public’s mind about Brexit, then it’s more than possible that newspapers would follow. But it means changing enough people’s minds first, without having the support of the press. That will be difficult but not impossible. It would require a huge and professional pro-EU campaign, costing many millions, and enduring for many years. Why hasn’t it happened? I don’t know. I have been calling for such a campaign ever since I started to write about Brexit when the word was invented back in 2012.

Shane Mcerlean: Will it ever be possible to hold the “engineers” of Brexit to account legally? 

We need a public inquiry into Brexit and how a supposedly democratic country went ahead with it, despite only having the support of 37% of the electorate, and with two of the four member states of the UK voting against it.My view is that Leave only won by lying, law-breaking and cheating on a shocking scale. If the referendum had been a legally binding vote, instead of just an advisory poll, the courts would have had the power to annul the referendum result as being compromised and unsafe. The government treated the advisory referendum as legally binding and refused to allow our Parliament a debate and vote on the specific question of whether the UK SHOULD leave. It is essential that this is investigated, and that people are held to account if crimes or violations were committed.Clearly, the pro-Brexit Tories won’t do it. Neither will Labour in power, if they continue with their policy of supporting a Tory Brexit with their new slogan promising (forlornly in my view) to, ‘Make Brexit Work’.It’s likely that only a pro-Rejoin government, sometime in the future, will have the impetus and incentive to hold to account those responsible for an unlawful Brexit.

Ruth Woodhouse: In a recent comment you said that “Brexit is entirely incompatible with tackling Climate Change”. Can you expand upon this, and is it an argument that we should be presenting more strongly and persistently, especially to the younger generation?

Countries trying to ‘go it alone’ simply doesn’t work when tackling planetary problems. That’s why Brexit is the antithesis of successfully managing climate change. Doing more trade with continents thousands of miles away, and less with our neighbouring countries, cannot square with reducing our country’s carbon footprint. We should, of course, be doing the opposite: conducting most trade locally and with nearby countries. But Brexit has put up unnecessary barriers to trade with our neighbours. Brexit means nationalism. The former President of France, François Mitterrand, once said, “Nationalism means war.”  Nationalism also means that global threats, such as climate change and pandemics, cannot be dealt with so effectively or efficiently, because all nations need to work together in close cooperation, and not in conflict. The EU is about European countries working together. Brexit is not. And yes, Rejoiners have not made enough of the argument that tackling climate change means, for a start, European countries collaborating, whereas Brexit has shunned European collaboration. As far as Brexit is concerned, it’s a ‘blah, blah, blah’ way to deal with climate change.

Steve Wilson: How do we persuade Tory backbenchers that the current path of their party is a dangerous, extremist version of Conservatism? Or should we just let them destroy themselves from within?

In a democracy, the only power to change things is with the power of persuasion. As I have written many times, true Tories were Remainers. Every Conservative Prime Minister, from Harold Macmillan to David Cameron, supported Britain being in the European Community. Only the latest two Tory Prime Ministers have supported Brexit whilst in office, but before the referendum, they had previously supported Remain. As Brexit continues to cause more harm to Britain, and offers no benefits, we should lobby Tory MPs to persuade them that their party has strayed from its historical path of supporting Britain in the EU. Could the six Tory Prime Ministers from 1957 to 2016 all be wrong, and the latest two incumbents be right? We should keep putting to Tory backbenchers that the party needs to return to its roots and get back to the centre ground, away from extremist right-wing politics. Some may respond. It may only need a few. But it is important. For example, imagine a future scenario where a minority pro-Rejoin party is in power, but needs the support of a handful of Tory MPs to win a key policy. Now is the time to win those handful or more of Tory backbenchers to our side.

Steve Harding: If there were another referendum or the winning party at the next UK elections stance was to rejoin the EEC and subsequent negotiations went well, what would be the realistic timescales for this? 

That’s a bit of a “how long is a piece of string” question. The truth is, we simply don’t know at this stage. It would depend on the extent of any new government’s commitment to closer ties, and we suspect, to which party wins. Should a new government’s idea of what constitutes rejoining include unrealistic aims, e.g. any efforts to cherry-pick, then any manifesto promise of closer ties might not be all it appears to be. In any case, the most urgent action needed in order to further our goals of rejoining the EU completely, will definitely require getting rid of the current government. Only then, will we be able to see the wood for the trees.

Angie Scarr: Is there any interest in supporting the particular difficulties of 1950s expat women who have lost their pensions?

We have every sympathy with WASPI women – in fact we have many members who are affected, including three members of this council. However, when we asked our members recently what they would like us to concentrate our efforts on, this topic was not raised. Rather, the vast majority of our members wanted us to go back to our roots and concentrate our efforts on Brexit – holding the government to account, calling out the lies and broken promises, and longer-term – campaigning to rejoin. We will, of course, continue to support and promote any WASPI activity on Twitter (where the topics we cover and support are more wide ranging), and on a personal level.

Michael Soffe: Would the Bremain Council consider throwing its weight behind a pro-European party such as Volt or the one about to be formed by Gina Miller? 

As a not-for-profit Spanish registered association, we are not able to affiliate ourselves with any particular political party, even if our goals were completely aligned. What we can do, however, is to promote specific campaign activity for any suitable parties and share and promote those campaigns. For example, pre-Brexit, we regularly shared memes and proposals from anti-Brexit parties like the LibDems. We will continue to promote the activities of any existing or new party that shares our aims and values, both in the UK and in Europe.

Ruth Woodhouse: How can we as a group be more proactive?

That’s an excellent question, and one we’d like to know the answer to ourselves! At the AGM, we spoke of the difficulties we always have in engaging enough support from our membership. We have now expanded our council, which gives us more bandwidth, but there is only so much we can do ourselves without the help and support of more volunteers. At our next council meeting, we will discuss further the idea of putting together guidelines to explain how members can get involved, whether that be with the lobby group, on social media or in other ways. Any suggestions on how we twist a few more arms for support are always welcome!

The biggest issue raised and discussed at our AGM was Bremain’s ongoing coverage of Covid-related news in our Facebook group. We thank both Ruth Woodhouse and Michael Soffe for raising this issue, and to everyone for their input. You can see the result of this discussion in a separate, dedicated article.

Peter Jukes is an English author, screenwriter, playwright, literary critic and journalist. He is also the founder and executive editor of Byline Times and co-founder of Byline Festival. 

Follow him on Twitter: @peterjuke

Pat Kennedy: Why don’t more intelligent, well read, long headed (Ulster terminology) clued in people like yourself stand as MPs? Billy Connolly once said that the desire to be one should immediately disqualify one. Has he been proven right?

Had to look up ‘long-headed’! Thanks! Right now, I think the problems with democracy are more profound than just those who stand for Parliament. They only win or lose in the context of a broken fourth estate, where our information is either parlayed by non-domiciled billionaire media owners or twisted by social media giants like Facebook who monetise outrage and conspiracy theory. So, my priority is to do what I can to create (or recreate) an information space where – whatever the political solutions may be – we all accept a common reality and common problems. With the US Republican Party now dominated by the ‘Big Lie’ that Biden stole the election from Trump, and the UK vitiated by Covid deniers, Anti-Vaxxers, and a government still trying to convince us how great Brexit is, this basic substrata of truth seems to be missing.

Mike Phillips: What issue do you think we could prosecute the Johnson government with to successfully prove misconduct in office?

Though there have been noble attempts to use the Misconduct law for prosecutions, I doubt if that’s the real route. It’s too politicised for the judiciary. More effective to me seems the route taken by the Good Law Project and Foxglove in subjecting the government to judicial review over specific policies such as the Crony Contracts scandal (first broken by Byline Times), pork-barrel spending, GP data grabs etc. I note that Matt Hancock, Lord Bethell, Gavin Williamson and Robert Jenrick are no longer ministers. This is – I believe – a direct result of investigative journalism and time judicial review.

The Afghanistan withdrawal displayed a weakness in UK foreign relations. How can the UK continue to work with EU nations to provide an alternative strategy to a US lead foreign policy?

Long before the calamitous withdrawal this summer, the UK’s actual military effectiveness as a junior partner to the US in both the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, was being severely doubted by our superpower ally.  Though individuals have made extreme sacrifices, our deployment in both Basra and Helmand left US commanders wondering what had happened to the British military. We were punching beyond our weight for decades and now are depleted. This may be a good thing. We have traditionally spent more on defence than other European countries. As America becomes more isolationist, and the threat to Europe from Russia post the Ukraine Maidan revolution increases, there will be a space for further European cooperation. And the power of Europe, though it needs military backup, has been mainly soft power. Many former Cold War adversaries are now, through the power of the acquis, firmly in the orbit of liberal democracy. There are problems with Hungary and Poland to be sure, but the main source of violence of the previous four centuries, war in Europe between the Great Powers, is now a very dim and distant prospect. So, my hope is that the UK will realise that, in defence terms as well as economic terms, our main hope is with the rest of Europe.

Valerie Chaplin: Bylines is growing in the UK, but there are many UK nationals residing in the rest of the world. Have you any plans to include them?

Hopefully, they have no problem accessing either the Bylines Network of local and regional sites, or the newspaper and TV channel online. We mail out the paper to many different countries. But I’m sure the Bylines Network would welcome a site for Britons overseas.

Steve Wilson: What is the main aim of the Bylines media network, and is the message cutting through?

The message is simple – truth matters. The only way that democracy can work is with an informed electorate, and with disinformation, dark money and Astro-turfed fake news rife, we have to go back to basics and reaffirm that reality matters. Of course, the Government and its media allies and PR campaigns can try to negate the truth of their terrible handling of the Coronavirus or impacts of a hard Brexit. They can try to distract us with culture wars over statues and taking the knee. But just as in the fantastic TV series Chernobyl – as the Soviet authorities tried to cover up the design flaws in their nuclear reactor – reality has a way of seeping beyond the control of ideology and propaganda. As the whistleblowing scientist Valery Legasov says in the TV series: “The truth doesn’t care about our needs or wants, it doesn’t care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time.” 

David Eldridge: What are the chances of a “progressive alliance” before the next election, and if such an alliance was formed, what should its main focus be?

I’m not qualified to predict if people will rally around these principles of truth, transparency and accountability before the next election. Certainly, my hope is that more and more people are waking up to the corruption, malfeasance and oligarchical dark money in our midst. If they do, then we should rally around these basic principles of democratic reform, now being undermined by the current Elections Bill. A strong electoral commission, tighter laws on party funding, enforcing the Ministerial Code, banning foreign interference and hidden spending – the list is long but like the 1832 Reform Act, there is a wide public interest that could appeal across the spectrum. 

Matt Burton: As discussions around Brexit and Covid almost inevitably lead to people basing their thoughts on their feelings, rather than evidence, what can be done to make our public discourse more data-based?

As I’ve indicated, I do believe that reason, objectivity and a common shared understanding of the basic principles of reality are important for a democracy to function. Byline Times has recently created a Byline Intelligence Team to look at a number of issues, from crony contracts, Conservative donors, to healthcare commercialisation to see what the actual data shows. It is led by Iain Overton, a great pioneer and practitioner of ‘data driven’ journalism. But data needs to be turned into information and then processed a stage further to become knowledge. Ultimately, the final refinement of data is wisdom. And at each stage of that process, appealing to people’s everyday lives, their experiences, values and feelings is very important. As someone who spent most of my previous career in fiction, I do understand the importance of storytelling. But you’re right: storytelling unmoored from reality becomes dangerous – a mixture of myth, bias and self-fulfilling prophecy

Lisa Burton: Do you think we will ever see a Levenson 2 type inquiry to expose the corruption and power of some of the media and what, if anything, could be done to push for one?

Our sister organisation Byline Investigates, run by two former tabloid journalists who have repented of their pasts, has done something to restitute for the gap left by Theresa May’s cancellation of Leveson 2 which was always designed to happen once the phone-hacking trials were over. The civil courts are doing a good job at exposing the privacy intrusions of the Sun and the Mirror Group. The Daniel Morgan Independent Panel report exposed some of what Gordon Brown described as “the criminal media nexus”. But because the Conservative Party is so close to the main malefactors in the right-wing press, Leveson 2 is highly unlikely, and I doubt the Labour Party has the stomach to bring it back. But the good news is that the public are much more aware of the cabal operating in the press and much more critical. Their revenues and influence are declining with the rise of new media, and they are kept on their toes by constant public scrutiny and advertising boycotts like those encourage by Stop Funding Hate. The horse has bolted, I fear, when it comes to Leveson2. But there are many other ways to tame the feral press.

Bremainers Ask – October feature: The Bremain Council are holding our annual Steering Meeting on 23 October, followed by our AGM on 24 October in Málaga. We therefore felt this would be a great opportunity for our members to put questions directly to the Council. 

If you would like to submit a question for consideration, please contact us by email, no later than 15 October here: mailto:enquiries@Bremaininspain.com

As part of our regular Bremainers Ask feature, we occasionally ask previous contributors to comment on the latest political developments.

This month we are delighted to welcome back Naomi Smith, Ian Dunt and Jonathan Lis who have all agreed to comment on the current state of play of British politics and, in particular, Brexit.

This is what they had to say:

Naomi Smith

Naomi is Chief Executive Office of Best for Britain and host on the Oh God What Now podcast. She originally answered members’ questions in April 2020

Brexit remains far from done, and a positive we can all take is that this Government’s incompetence is beginning to visibly impede its ability to deliver it.

There are still many issues requiring long-term solutions which aren’t forthcoming from Boris Johnson’s Government. Frustratingly though, while it is easy to revel in their incompetence, British business is suffering as a result, which is something that we all expected but is incredibly difficult to watch, nonetheless

In terms of Brexit-related news to look out for in the media, the end of a grace period allowing chilled meats to move from Great Britain to Northern Ireland expires on 1 October. The key issue here is that the Government has given little indication of their long-term solution to fix it beyond this date. You may have seen this legislation dubbed in the media as the “sausage wars”, and though it may sound trivial when framed like that, it yet again underpins another Brexit failing. Lord Frost called for a “permanent solution” to the issue around chilled meats back in June, but no progress has been announced. We will have to watch this space to see what happens.

The above news is somewhat disappointing, but I do have some good news, which is that the UK Trade and Business Commission will be releasing its interim report in the coming months. The report details key issues on the sausage wars and more, alongside some forward-looking solutions that aim to improve what has been an enormously difficult period for us all. The Commission was launched back in April and is co-convened by Hilary Benn MP and Peter Norris of the Virgin Group. It exists as a cross-party group of Parliamentarians and leading business experts from across the UK.

The Commission has discussed a wide range of topics, and each meeting has always returned to the same inescapable fact; that Brexit isn’t working and is proving to be a real disaster. Whether the issues have been artists needing visas and work permits to tour Europe; the UK’s desperation to agree a poor free-trade deal with Australia; or the enormous challenges that SMEs are having in trying to export across the continent, it has shown that Brexit is not working and, unless the Government moves away from tactics of megaphone diplomacy and towards meaningful engagement, more issues will develop.

There is hope. The Government is having no choice but to listen to the work of the UK Trade and Business Commission. Truth and facts are unarguable, and in having experts show the Government what they are destroying in pursuing a damaging Brexit strategy, the Commission is gaining strength and traction. As we continue to focus on this important work, the road remains bumpy, but we are sure in our convictions that if we keep making the right noises, we may have a chance of better days ahead.

Things aren’t as bad as we think.

You look around and they seem dreadful: a clown-car Prime Minister, the hardest possible version of Brexit, tens of thousands of needless deaths due to the Government’s catastrophically inept COVID response, entrenched cronyism, a barrage of authoritarian legislation and a stubborn Tory lead, no matter what they do. It looks bad.

But when you peer past the day-to-day news, there are glimmers of a more positive future.

Look at that Tory polling lead. It is stubborn, but it is also startlingly volatile. Last year, during the Dominic Cummings Barnard Castle debacle, it plummeted with alarming speed. There is currently a sustained decline in the wake of last month’s opening up, Boris Johnson’s culture war against the England football team and the Matt Hancock resignation.

Look at the recent comments between Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey and Labour Keir Starmer, which suggest that they seem comfortable working together – informally, behind the scenes – in order to maximise their chances of taking on the Conservatives at the next election. Look at the difficulties the Tories are having hanging on to their traditional seats in the south.

Events are not set in stone. This Government has severe weaknesses which will be highlighted, not hidden, by the end of the pandemic.

This is also true for Brexit. The moment of defeat is now behind us. The requirement now is to work out how we build a closer relationship with the EU and then eventually get back in.

That process starts with a narrative. This will not come as a bolt out of thin air. It will emerge over years. And yet you can see it coming together now. How long has it been since you heard a positive story about Brexit? Months. The last one was the attempt to suggest that Britain’s fast vaccine roll-out was a result of having left the EU. This was nonsense, of course, and is now anyway redundant given some European countries have sped ahead of us. But it was generally accepted by many people. Before that, it’s hard to think of any.

There are, however, plenty of negative stories about Brexit: The sudden potential for disorder in Northern Ireland, the barriers to trade within the UK, empty supermarket shelves, outraged farmers and agricultural exporters, exorbitant customs costs, visa charges for holiday-makers. The list goes on and on. It’s a drip-drip-drip of negativity.

It’s easy to sneer when people say this wasn’t the Brexit they voted for. But in fact each time this is said, it reflects another potential convert. Most Leave voters will never say Brexit was wrong. But they can be convinced that it is not going well, and that a future Government needs to fix the relationship, which will inevitably entail us moving closer.

That journey will start with a narrative, of Brexit being a failure. And that is precisely the narrative which is emerging now, slowly, in a long and shallow wave of daily disparate news reports.

Things look bad and it’s easy to get depressed about it. But the Government is weaker than it seems, the public are more open minded than they appear, and in the long term, there are good reasons to be optimistic.

Jonathan Lis

Jonathan is deputy director of the pro-EU think tank British Influence, and a political writer and commentator. He answered our members’ questions in September 2020

The news stories are beginning to dribble in, but few people are listening and even fewer joining the dots. Stories that would ordinarily resonate with the public on different levels – a shortage of blood testing vials, empty supermarket shelves, no milkshakes at McDonalds – aren’t hitting home.

Part of the reason is COVID. It is very easy for the Government and its media cheerleaders to associate shortages with the pandemic because the virus has impacted us in so many different ways already. Less easy to explain is why these shortages did not happen during the first nine months of coronavirus, when we were de facto full members of the EU.

Another part of the reason is Brexit fatigue. There is a feeling, widely shared even by many Remainers, that Brexit has happened and cannot be relitigated. Many people wonder what good can come from ‘I told you so’: it provides little satisfaction to the people saying it, and only alienates the people they are saying it to. Certainly, there is no electoral mileage in telling voters that they didn’t listen to all the warnings and got it wrong. This fatigue, incidentally, also stretches to commentators. I know personally that, after almost six years of endless debate, I feel exhausted by Brexit, and don’t much enjoy writing about it anymore. If that’s the opinion of a former Remain activist, how can we expect ordinary members of the public to busy themselves with it?

The third reason, though, should spur us on. Namely, the insidious pact between the Government and parts of the media to actively deny the role of Brexit in the current and future difficulties. The problems are not happening, or they are nothing to do with the EU, or do not remotely prove that the Brexiters were wrong. It is in everyone’s interests that we tell the truth about what happened, what’s happening now and what is still to happen. It’s the only way we can safeguard truth and integrity in public discourse.

Anna Bird is the CEO of the European Movement UK. She joined the European Movement in September 2020, having previously led political influencing campaigns at Scope, the Fawcett Society and Mind. Anna is a passionate Europhile, a European Studies graduate and Erasmus alumnus, who studied in France and Italy and started her career as a stagiaire in the European Parliament.

Alan Brown : European Movement describes Brexit as a historic, national mistake and says it “will fight to rejoin the EU as soon as it is politically possible”. Given that no political opposition party wants to talk about the Brexit mistake, how will it ever be ”politically possible” to rejoin, or even achieve a version of the single market?

It’s our job to make it politically possible. We can’t rely on the political parties, that’s abundantly clear!

How do we do it? We have to expose to the public the huge harm that is being done by this Brexit deal. By using local issues and human stories, we can make the impact of Brexit resonate with people at an emotional level, not just a rational one. We’re providing the tools for our local groups to do just that.

And then we need to offer hope and the possibility of something different. We talk at the European Movement about building back step by step. Some of these steps might include: rejoining Erasmus, securing a deal on veterinary standards, getting an EU-wide visa waiver for touring artists … we’re campaigning on all these issues.

Clearly, this government’s Brexit just isn’t working. We’re seeing that in the empty shelves in the supermarkets, the tension in Northern Ireland and workforce shortages. So, change is inevitable. That provides an opportunity to move us closer to the end goal.

Valerie Chaplin :You have over 100 groups around the UK, that campaign for upholding citizens’ rights etc. Which UK citizens’ groups do you work with in the EU 27?

Well… Bremain in Spain, obviously! You are a valued EM affiliate. As a member of European Movement International we have links to citizens groups across all EU member states and beyond. And we met just this week to explore opportunities with British in Europe, who are doing great work advocating for UK citizens in Brussels.

There’s no doubt much more we could and should do to build our links across the EU with UK citizens’ groups, and to be able to offer more to our members who live on the continent. Any suggestions for how to do that – I’m all ears.

Steven Wilson : European Movement have a reputation for being middle-aged, male and white. How do you intend to encourage more diversity in the organisation?

If we want to stay relevant, this has to be a top priority and as a lifelong equality campaigner, this matters to me very much. One of my first actions was to propose 3 new candidates to join EM’s Executive Committee to improve diversity at the top table. I was delighted that the National Council approved the nominations of Molly Scott Cato, Jane Thomas and Sajjad Karim, and all three have made an outstanding contribution in the few months since they joined. 

As CEO, I have started to embed an inclusive, flexible working environment (as a mum to two young children this is vital for me, but it works well for others in the team who juggle caring responsibilities, needy dogs and political and non-exec roles alongside their day jobs!)

And I’m working with Andrew (Adonis, our chair) and Molly on much deeper reform of our governance structures, so that diversity is ‘baked in’ for the future. The proposals would ensure a much larger National Council in which no less than 40% of seats go to women and there are reserved places for people from Black and Minority ethnic communities and young people. Alongside this we intend to recruit a diversity officer to the board, who will work with appointed diversity leads in our local groups, to build a diverse pipeline of campaigners, ambassadors and leaders for our movement.

We’ve got a long way to go but change is afoot – and importantly, it’s already making the EM a much more vibrant, creative and fun place to be.

Anon : Can the government be defeated at the next election, and if so, how?

I tend to leave the political punditry to others in the European Movement, so I don’t know that I’m the best person to answer this question! But 130,000 people have died during the pandemic, key industries have been betrayed over Brexit, the peace process in Northern Ireland has been undermined – these are all conscious choices made by this government, a shameful legacy for Boris Johnson, and this will be the backdrop to the next election.

I hope that progressive parties will work together to oust this government, and I also hope and expect that any future Tory leader will want to signal distance from this regime and will soften its stance somewhat on our relationship with the EU, if only to mitigate the economic impact of this hard Brexit deal. But we have to play our part for these things to happen. We need to hold this government to account robustly and prevent the impact of Brexit being swept under the Covid carpet. We can give a platform to politicians from across the political spectrum who are willing to call out the harm that is being done and those willing to voice pro-EU views. We need to organise and mobilise so that we are a strong voice when that election comes. That’s why the EM is investing to grow our membership for the future – there’s a long road and some big campaigns ahead!

Michael Frederick Phillips : There are many protest groups representing UK residents in the EU focused on how to hold the UK government to account for the detrimental effects of Brexit. How best can we form a strategic alliance of these groups to focus on the EU and raise our visibility?

A strategic alliance is a great plan: the more united the voice, the more profile and impact you will have. I’d be interested to know what’s preventing that now – is it resources and time, or different views and approaches? If the European Movement can help facilitate a coming together, we’d be very happy to do so. Could we convene a summit or a regular (e.g. quarterly?) roundtable for groups to share intelligence, find some shared goals and campaign opportunities? Could we extend some of our campaign tools and training offer to groups like yours to build your firepower? We’re open to ideas and happy to help.

David Eldridge : As you used to work in the mental health field, what effects do you think Brexit is having on people’s mental health?

Brexit is leading to all sorts of negative impact for people – precarious work situations, families and living arrangements being thrown into chaos, communities losing jobs and investment, and people’s fundamental sense of identity and belonging under threat.  All of these social and economic factors are determinants of mental ill-health too, so there’s no question that there will be a mental health impact. But I suspect it will be hard to calculate and to some extent masked by the huge mental health impact of the Covid pandemic.

We all have a role to play in supporting people through. Now more than ever, groups like Bremain in Spain and other groups in our network can provide some comfort and solidarity to those affected by Brexit. We are a community of like-minded people with a shared goal – to rebuild our relationship with the EU. That’s one of the many reasons why building our movement is so important – people affected by Brexit need to know that we are here to bear witness and expose the harm that’s been done.

Next month will see the return of our occasional feature – Bremainers Ask Revisited. We will be asking former contributors to comment on the current state of play of British politics, in particular Brexit. We are delighted to be welcoming back Naomi Smith, Ian Dunt and Jonathan Lis, and look forward to hearing their thoughts on the subject.