Collaboration Helps Consolidate European Movement UK - European Movement

The European Movement UK (EMUK) is consolidating its presence through formal collaboration with like-minded organisations. We now have an official partnership with Scientists for EU, Healthier IN the EU, and an affiliation agreement with Britain for Europe.

We are at a time when opposition to plans to exit the European Union is becoming more organised. Theresa May lost any mandate she thought she had for a hard Brexit after the General Election and now more and more people are uniting behind the belief that leaving the EU is a disastrous mistake and we need to steer the UK away from the cliff edge...

Read on: Collaboration Helps Consolidate European Movement UK - European Movement

The Convention - "Brexit and the Political Crash" 12 & 13 May, 2017

This email just arrived and may be of interest to people in and around London.

The European Movement is pleased to be supporting The Convention, an exciting event happening this May discussing "Brexit and the Political Crash". The following message is from its Director, Henry Porter:

Within hours of the General Election being announced, the inevitable process of narrowing the debate on Brexit began. We believe this is wrong and that Brexit deserves much greater scrutiny than has been allowed in Parliament, or is likely over the course of the election campaign. For two days at the start of the campaign  - and just after the French election campaign - the Convention on Brexit and the Political Crash, will examine the detail of Brexit and place it in the context of huge cultural and political developments in the US, Russia and Europe. BOOK TICKETS We are living in momentous times and the key to surviving them is to make sense of the deep forces at work, which is why we have taken Abraham Lincoln’s slogan - ‘think anew, act anew.’ We look forward to welcoming you to Central Hall Westminster on May 12 and 13 for two days of indispensable debate, analysis and conversation, when you, too, can have your say. Yours sincerely, Henry Porter Director of The Convention

Copyright © 2017 European Movement UK, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: European Movement UK Suite 1912A, Portland House Bressenden Place London, SW1E 5RS United Kingdom

Brexit is bad for Britain - Stephen Dorrell

Brexit is bad for Britain

Today the Prime Minister has formally begun our withdrawal from the European Union in triggering Article 50.

Theresa May says that the referendum result means we should all come together and collude in a pretence that Brexit is good for Britain.

I profoundly disagree.

Too often I hear an argument which begins “The referendum result must be accepted; I regret the outcome, but we have to make the best of it”.

That is not a sound basis for policy in a representative democracy. It is what we normally call “trimming”. “Telling the voters what they want to hear”. “Putting convenience before principle”.

It is obviously right that those who lose elections lose power. That is what happened last year. But it doesn’t follow that those who lose power must change their minds.

I was a member of the Cabinet which lost power to Labour in 1997. Our parties disagreed on a number of issues, but after the result nobody expected me to declare that everything I’d fought for was a mistake, and I didn’t.

That is how representative democracy works. Those involved in public life seek support for their point of view and when they win, they have a mandate to follow through their policy for as long as they can sustain that support.

But those who disagree with them have not merely the right, but the obligation, to argue their case, not out of a misplaced commitment to consistency, but because our society benefits from noisy debate between those with different points of view.