Joe Salmon, 21 April 2024, Tags:
AS EVER THESE ARE ONLY MY OWN THOUGHTS AND DO NOT REPRESENT THE VIEWS OR OPINIONS OF THE REST OF THE GREEN GROUP AND ARE ONLY MY OWN IDEAS AT THE TIME OF WRITING
Last week I attended the Dorset Humanist hustings, you can find my detailed thoughts on some of the topics covered here in my earlier blog post https://bcp.greenparty.org.uk/moordown/joes-blog/2024/04/07/humanist-hustings/ and my introductory speech here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkr-lS12NYU
I’ve also done a video response to the nonsense Tobias has put out earlier this week on 20mph which you can find here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY2oEDrwGKs
One of the things that struck me was how similar at times we all sounded, so I thought it would be helpful to look at what is different between myself and the other parliamentary candidates, and also cover a topic I’ve been asked about a few times which is Brexit.
The Liberal Democrat candidate, Tobais and Labour’s Tom Hayes are all what many people would call remainers.
The majority of people I know outside of politics voted to leave the EU. I personally supported having a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU, but when it came to the referendum I begrudgingly voted to remain in the EU. For me Brexit was the right idea at the wrong time. Leaving the EU was like leaving a job you didn’t like, that you knew had zero chance of progression. It’s the right thing to do, but you have to get the timing right and get all your ducks in a row first. Really you need a plan, and to have something else lined up. Maybe to overextend a metaphor it’s like leaving a job where you work crazy hours and so don’t really have time to plan for much, because you can’t really apply for other jobs with the demanding schedule you’ve got etc but there is no getting away from the fact that you can do it right or do it wrong.
I didn’t think our political class or system was robust enough or free enough of corruption for Brexit to work. I believe I’ve been proved right. The solution isn’t to reapply for that same crap job, it is to get on with finding the better one we were aiming for.
There has been a fantastic re-framing of the Brexit debate as almost either a clash between either the right and the left with the right supporting Brexit and the left opposing, or even simply the uninformed against the informed with the uniformed supporting Brexit and the informed opposing.
However this is not my memory of the discussion around Brexit. I remember there being a clear case for leaving the EU as reforming it into a more transparent, democratic, effective and accountable organisation being almost impossible. This wasn’t simply a case made by those on the right, but also those on the left as well. Indeed while what many of us remember about Corbyn is his poor handling of accusations and actual anti-semitism and pre-historic economic ideas, but a lot of the media criticism he received in both the run up to and aftermath of the Brexit referendum was because of his perceived reluctance to endorse the EU.
There is a long history of opposition to the EU, and this is not limited to figures considered to be on the right of the political spectrum such as Tony Benn. Indeed my own beloved Green Party opposed joining the EU, and Lord Jenny Jones campaigned for Britain to leave the EU in the run up to the Brexit referendum.
https://youtu.be/f0wFii8klNg?feature=shared
https://unherd.com/newsroom/caroline-lucas-the-eurosceptic-who-became-an-arch-remainer/
After the result of the referendum, unlike many in the political establishment who shrugged their shoulders when faced with the task of making Brexit a reality (David Cameron’s decision to stand down in the aftermath of the result was one of the most irresponsible decisions ever taken in British political history in my opinion) leaders within the Green movement did step up and work to present a workable plan on Brexit. I would single out the work at the time of Molly Scott Cato whose understanding of the EU and the challenges decoupling from it would pose.
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/how-green-is-their-brexit/
However there never was any sensible implementation of Brexit, and now there is considerable regret from many who voted for Brexit that they did not get what they were promised. While many who advocated for or supported Brexit have now taken up the position that the idea was always doomed to failure I do not think this is the case.
I do not think the decision to leave the EU was the wrong one, but factors at the time such as the influence of corporate and corrupt money made it hard for such a project to work. What we’ve seen since Brexit is a mixture of gleefully malicious compliance and astonishing incompetence from the civil servants and MPs made to make this happen. For the most part after the dust settled we were left with a government made up of either chancers who supported Brexit because it was a path to power, and had no understanding of what leaving the EU entailed, or others who didn’t think Brexit could work and didn’t even have a vision of what a post Brexit UK economy would look like.
Links for video blog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY2oEDrwGKs
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