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. Alex

    Please don’t split those that would support the fight against leaving the EU into Left good Right bad.
    Corbyn supports leaving the EU supported by his three inner advisers. Whilst there are many of us in the centre right who definitely support staying in the EU.
    We need to stay together at this time and fight the real enemy of British prosperity. The leavers!

  2. Alison

    Bit Countyist!

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