AGM - Clare Moody
A powerful video by Clare Moody
Clare Moody, former MEP for South West and Gibraltar, opened Stroud4Europe’s AGM with a talk on where we, as pro Europeans, go from here. Please watch the short, inspiring video below.
Clare’s talk is prefaced by a tribute to Mark Huband who was a member of S4E’s committee and died very sadly and very unexpectedly two days before the AGM.
Brief summary of talk from and discussions with Clare Moody at Stroud4Europe’s AGM – 8.11.21
Please listen to Clare’s talk in full on the video here:
After our departure from the EU, the December ’19 election results and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, we now have the government’s catastrophic attitude to the treaty they signed, with the resultant decline in our reputation across the world.
However, there are glimmers of hope for pro Europeans - with current problems of empty shelves, petrol and energy crises and poor international relations , all being exacerbated by Brexit.
We need to show “persistence beats resistance” by following up Brexit impacts issue by issue.
Few people will enjoy hearing about the Customs Union and Single Market. We have to target in particular the middle 40% “floating voters” with issues we can all identify with.
Sewage: When in the EU we had legislation and enforcement against breaching sewage disposal rates.
Got to put the impact of Brexit into the argument to shift public opinion and identify Brexit as Boris Johnson’s big project. He is falling out of favour amongst his back benchers
We need to illustrate the reality that “Brexit is broken” and the benefits of improving relations with the EU.
In beginning to offer hope to the public and winning the argument that life and our country could be better without the present Brexit, we also need to have fun!
The follow on question and answer session can be viewed here:-
Q and A summary
Q. Is it not necessary to back up these arguments with details about the Customs Union and Single Market?
A. Yes. When we had shortages of goods and fuel, no other EU country was suffering similarly. We had to pay an American company to operate a factory of which CO2 was the by-product, in order to have CO2 for the meat processing industry!
Q. Europe is punishing us for leaving
A. This is not the reality. We (Frost and Johnson) signed the agreement to leave – the EU just want us to abide by it!
Q. Did we transfer EU law (on water quality) into UK law?
A: The Commons was trying to change that law to free up water companies. UK enforcement is very weak with feeble penalties that don’t discourage bad behaviour and have less authority than the EU. Austerity hollowed out many of the relevant agencies.
Q. New arrangements for cross channel travel may change perceptions. Two hour queue to return to UK thanks to Border Force and roaming charges are being applied.
A. Many negative impacts of Brexit are being excused as Covid related at present – and woeful press reporting. Roaming and data will be huge costs for travellers. It will be harder and harder for Brexiteers to hide behind Covid.
Q. Passport queues getting longer too – UK won’t allow us to enable passports for electronic vetting! Why would EU airports want to employ more staff just to accommodate UK travellers? !
Q. Brexit voters are not travellers so it won’t affect them.
A. That’s a myth in fact. Brexit voters were a broad demographic. Think of Jacob Rees Mogg with his company having moved to the Republic. He will be travelling!
Q. Rules of origin rules are supposed to change in January?
A. In January they are due to introduce checks at UK border for imports from the EU. At the moment no-one checking what’s coming in which could be dangerous and puts our products at a disadvantage because exports to the EU are checked. When checks do start – January or later – there will likely be even more empty shelves and more inflation.
Q. Do imports from the EU at least meet EU standards?
A. Yes in the main but there has already been an issue, before we left the EU, about our borders being leaky to counterfeit products from outside the EU and it is now known there aren’t checks so it makes us more vulnerable.