Jon Danzig is a campaigning journalist writing about human rights and the European Union. Now on BlueSky at: bsky.app/profile/jondanzig.b…
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ALT During the referendum, a Sunday Express front page claimed that unless Britain voted for Brexit, 12 million Turks would move to the UK when Turkey joined the EU. A month later, the paper admitted that the claim was entirely untrue.
ALT BBC News on 10 June inaccurately described how the EU functions. Senior BBC journalist, Christian Fraser – who usually presents the BBC’s Context news programme – got the context of the European Commission completely wrong. Reporting from Brussels for the European Parliament elections, Mr Fraser said, “There are two things to say about this [European] Parliament, it doesn’t work like a conventional Parliament. “Legislation is reserved for the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU. “They don’t like interference from the Parliament. They don’t like interference from the European leaders...” The impression given was that it’s the Commission that has all the power in the EU, above that of the elected European Parliament and the elected Presidents and Prime Ministers of EU member states. In truth, it’s the other way around. The Commission is the servant of the EU and not its master.
ALT Back in December 2020, I ran a story headlined, ‘EU won't feature in Labour's next manifesto, says Keir Starmer’. Few believed it then. But it has come to pass.
ALT Compare what former Prime Minister, Sir John Major, said about Brexit, with what the current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and likely next month’s Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, said in the Sky News leaders’ debate last night (Wednesday). Well, Sunak and Starmer said nothing about Brexit. That’s right, nothing. But Sir John has a lot to say about Brexit. He thinks it’s a “colossal mistake”. We should be back in the EU to keep Britain safe, Sir John told a Parliamentary committee in February last year.
ALT If the EU did not exist, it's highly likely that the countries and continent of Europe would now be in a far worse situation. For hundreds of years, European countries were more used to resolving their differences by violence, war, and subjugation. There was no easy, let alone democratic, means to decide the running and future direction of our continent, as we have now through the EU.
ALT The majority vote for Leave was in response to a significant proportion of Britons - mostly in England - feeling forgotten, poorer, with diminished prospects and lower pay in real terms and feeling the pain of savage austerity cuts. The ten most deprived towns in England voted for Brexit. That’s no coincidence.
ALT It’s our duty to speak up and break the silence by our political leaders. Going ahead with Brexit, with the support of a mere 37% of the electorate and with half the nations of the UK voting strongly against it, was an abomination. In other democracies with more experience of running referendums properly, Brexit could never have proceeded based on such minority support. There are NO benefits to Brexit; none whatsoever. Only severe downsides, that are hurting Britain now and will increasingly hurt us in the years ahead. We need our politicians to offer us a democratic route out of Brexit, not an undemocratic road deeper into it. But neither Labour nor the Tories will even discuss Brexit. If the two main parties cannot be honest with us about the reality of Brexit, then we, the people, must be honest with the country and with ourselves. It is our duty to speak up.