People’s Vote campaigners are launching a counter-offensive to stop No Deal

With the launch of the 'Let Us Be Heard' campaign, activists want to put Brexit back to the people

It would be easy to despair. But, as always, young people and students offer hope to those without it.

On paper, it hasn’t been a good week for left wing advocates of a People’s Vote on any agreed form of Brexit.

The Conservative Party leadership contest – a direct challenge to Donald Tusk’s plea to ‘not waste time’, if there ever was one – is characterised by who can talk out Brexit and out rightwing the other.

My party, the Labour Party, continues to obfuscate on the question of Brexit, and a People’s Vote.

Our attempts to stop the democratic outrage of proroguing Parliament, and putting a stopper on No Deal, have come up short.

It would be easy to despair. But, as always, young people and students offer hope to those without it.

The campaign group I am involved with, For our Future’s Sake, were part of the launch of the massive ‘Let Us Be Heard’ campaign.

Brexit may be in a mire. The Conservative Party, as always, navel gazing. But the campaign for a People’s Vote isn’t sitting around. We’re taking the case to the country.

A nationwide offensive, starting in God’s own county, Yorkshire. 15 events, across the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. Rallies at both Labour and Conservative Party Conference. All culminating in one of the biggest demonstrations that Britain has ever seen, on October 12th. Book it out now, because it’ll be something to see.

Nigel Farage doesn’t own mass movements, or this country. Boris Johnson doesn’t have any mandate for a disastrous No Deal Brexit. Nor do they seek them – their own approval and appreciation has always been enough for the both of them.

There isn’t anything else like it in British politics. A genuinely grassroots and radical movement, claiming the democratic right for the people of this country to decide our Brexit future, not the Conservative Party’s membership.

Any young person on the left of British politics should, and needs to support this campaign.

We on the left have always acknowledged that in Newport, Luton and Sunderland, people had the right to feel aggrieved. It’s totally understandable why, when promised that Brexit would improve their lives, the public chose it. But three years on – after the chaos, the humiliation – only one thing is clear. That those very same people will be the ones hit hardest, for the longest by any Brexit, in particular a No Deal.

That’s why the country is moving. Why there’s a majority for radical policies and politics, for a People’s Vote and for staying in the EU.

Our opponents in this fight have never been the European Union, immigrants, or working class people. It is the hard right charlatans like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.

This is a fight we need to win.

Because this is a fight for the many who feel ignored by politicians hell bent on imposing the hardest form of Brexit on this country.

It will be a relentless and sustained programme of activity, designed to create an unstoppable mass movement.

That movement, built on the hopes of the young, will sweep through the country, and through party conference season, before culminating in London on October 12th.  

A week is a long time in politics, it’s true. So, the next four months are going to change everything.

Isobel Housecroft is a For Our Future’s Sake supporter and a Labour member from Yorkshire

7 Responses to “People’s Vote campaigners are launching a counter-offensive to stop No Deal”

  1. nshgp

    1. We’ve had the people’s vote. We have made the decision
    2. Given you can’t accept the existing vote you won’t accept the next vote either
    3. Why should we trust you when you constantly try and stop people’s lives from being improved by leaving the EU
    4. You are correct, its not about immigrants.
    5. It is however about migration. The policy. From the Windrush to the EU, its all been about cheap labour for Corporations.
    6. Politicians forced that on the public
    7. Politicians never asked for consent until the vote.
    8. Now politicians and yourself are saying no means yes.
    9. We have democratically decided to leave the EU. Which bit do you not understand?
    10. Which bit of £450,000 of state debt do you not understand? Socialist pensions with zero capital are just debt

  2. Tom Sacold

    Right-wing Blairites are using Vote Leave to try to reinvent the anti-socialist pink-toryism of New Labour

  3. Hobbo

    I voted remain in the referendum and WAS pro EC, now firmly in the leave camp after three years of watching the smugness and the contempt of those that rule in the EC toward the UK and other EU members it seems its there way or no way. I no longer want to be ruled by the EC trade with Europe only please.

  4. Robert R PhD

    Isobel, you know nothing about the true socialist cause. Look how the Germany/EU dealt with Greece (squeezing every social programme out of existence there), look at how the EU forced austerity on Ireland, Spain and Italy, look at how the EU lets literally thousands of migrants in each day and how that forces the average salary of the working class lower and lower each year. Tony Benn was right about the capitalists in Brussels in the 1970s and nothing has changed. I am 28 now and a devout Corbanite. If you get your way and ignore the largest vote in the history of our nation–one that enables us to embark on true socialism, then you and all your facist capitalists allies who are more interested in cheap mobile phone roaming charges than using all the money we pay to the EU for renationalising the railways and providing free university education should know that many of us younger generation will vote LEAVE. Not one of my Momentum friends wants to stay in the EU, so stop saying you speak of the left. YOU DONT. Come on everyone, enable true British socialism and support a truly independent socialist nation!

  5. Anita Roy

    Your Lexit commentators should consider with whom they are sharing a platform. By their friends, you shall know them. Farage,Trump, Boris, Bannon. They won’t lead to a socialist paradise. The EU is not perfect, but we have many like minded friends there who believe in international socialism and a greener, more sustainable world.
    The 2016 referendum was beset by lies, data misuse and vote leave overspending and should be rerun purely on those grounds. A further referendum would allow a vote for an actual deal ( or even No Deal) rather than the various unreal utopias that were presented in 2016.

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