James Bonallack - 23/07/2018

Why am I still fighting Brexit more than two years later?


Britain's falling star

Why am I still fighting Brexit more than two years later? Because I have to. Because as a boy I sat in a living room in Kent with my Czech grandmother's friends who had escaped Germany in the 1930s for a new life. Some had been in the camps and some had fought during the war and experienced defeat and occupation. All of them were deeply affected and compelled to love the country that had offered them safety and a future free from intolerance and persecution. They built lives in post war Britain and expressed gratitude through hard work, public service and a liberalism that defined and informed everything they acheived. My grandfather spent the entire war fighting in Africa and Italy. He came home on leave once in five years and didn't meet his second son until he was two years old. I grew up in the sixties with a strong connection to a generation whose lives were defined by two world conflicts only twenty years apart. There is at least one generation now that have lost that connection and hard won lessons are easily forgotten.

The European project grew out of that shared experience in the certain hope that such destruction would never happen again. The French and Germans put citizenship front and centre with a message of peace, cooperation and trade underpinned by the four freedoms. It might be a plaque remembering children taken out of class from a school in the Marais for deportation, or a town in Germany twinned with one in Wiltshire. It might be the Erasmus Student scheme or EU regional development grants or hundreds of other schemes that foster a spirit of endeavour. They all are symbols of a resolve to make Europe a continent to be shared with mutual respect.

This is what I fight for.

Brexit is an untested and incoherent mix of opposing ideologies. Brexit is a return to Enoch Powell, to the taunting of black footballers in the 70s, to a mythical plucky little England rather than today's Great Britain, to the idea that somehow the British working classes have been stitched up by uncontrolled immigration and 'Islamisation'. Brexit would have you believe a cabal of unelected Europeans with sinister intent seek to undermine our soveriegnty, our laws, and the independence of our armed services and our pre-eminent position in the world. Brexit is incoherent because it's founded on lies. An A level school textbook can quickly explain how The EU is elected and accountable; how European laws are more about lift safety and food packaging rather than government policy. We don't need a textbook to tell us that our armed services are the best in the Europe and will be at the heart of a European defence policy in a rapidly changing new world order where Trump and Putin are increasingly difficult to tell apart.

This is what I fight against.

We urgently need more voices to help before it's too late. With news that the government are going to send every household a brochure in August about how to prepare for a no deal Brexit I am increasingly scared that there is a small but signficant chance of grounded flights, bottle necks at Dover and even food, petrol and medical shortages. With every assessment and impact study showing severe job losses it's safe to say that Project Fear is now Project Reality and it's all self-inflicted.

What do I hope to acheive? That's easy. I will march, write and lobby to acheive safety, security and equal rights for the three and half million EU citizens that are disenfranchised and "in limbo". I will crowdfund, work and contribute however I can to ensure that the architects of Brexit and their dodgy financial backers are brought to book. Gove and Johnson want to create a deregulated low cost economy with a privatised NHS and drastically cut back public services. Vote Leave flouted electoral law. These individuals and others (names deleted) may well be party to more serious crimes against the state. Some are already the subject of police investigations.

Most of all however I want the British to understand and accept that we are a small insignificant island off the coast of an equally small and insignificant France. I want us to embrace a modern and exciting future as a leading voice inside a Federal European project. Our multicultural heritage, our globally important language and our flair for the creative, financial and entrepreneurial shows how much they need us. They recognise the sacrifices we made for the freedom of Europe and they want us to stay.

That should be the end but surely the last word has to be #stopbrexit.

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Article reproduced with kind permission from James Bonallack. https://www.facebook.com/james.bonallack
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