Voters are waking up to Brexit chaos and could punish Keir Starmer’s Labour government if it fails to end it, the Rejoin EU Party says.
While many mainstream politicians won’t mention Brexit, people increasingly understand the rising economic and political damage it’s doing, Rejoin EU Party leader Brendan Donnelly told the Press Association at Saturday’s National Rejoin March in London.
“This is a march of people who care about Britain’s relationship with the EU. We’re shocked and appalled by Brexit and we think it should be reversed,” Donnelly told PA in an interview (video link below).
“The main politicians don’t want to talk about it, but we want to remind them there are people who still care very much about Europe and understand the damage Brexit is doing to our country. It’ll only get worse and we’re confident people are increasingly realising that.
“I’m afraid Keir Starmer has started off quite unimpressively. I think he believes that if he just smiles at the people in Brussels and says ‘give me what I want’, it’ll be possible to have our cake and eat it after Brexit. I think that’s a delusion and I don’t think he’s serious at the moment.
“If he wanted to re-join the single market and customs union, I think that’s something that would be economically enormously valuable for this country. He says he wants economic growth as a priority of his premiership – well, why doesn’t he explore that avenue?
“I think some people thought Starmer was ‘playing a long game’ and that once he was in power, he would rapidly move away from what I regard as his absurd ‘red lines’, but that hasn’t happened – on the contrary, he seems to be reinforcing them.
“The youth mobility proposals, for instance, have been rejected, very unnecessarily in my view, because Starmer thinks they might smack of freedom of movement. Well, that in my opinion is an over-cautious, cowardly way of doing these things.
“You’re never going to appease the absolute eurosceptics – you have to explain to them they’re wrong and Starmer’s not had the confidence to do that. I hope he’ll develop it, but he hasn’t yet.
“We are, if you like, a bit like UKIP was 20 years ago. We want to explain to and persuade Starmer there’s an electoral price for being anti-European and we hope more and more people will come to share our view. In a democracy, people can change their minds.”
