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UK EPP WELCOMES DECISION BY TWO TOP BRITISH MEPS TO JOIN EPP GROUP IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

4/3/2018

On Wednesday, 28 February 2018, two senior British MEPs were welcomed into the heart of Europe’s leading political family, the EPP Group in the European Parliament, during the Group gathering before the start of this month’s mini-plenary session in Brussels.

This decision by Julie Girling MEP and Richard Ashworth MEP means that the EPP Group again includes all 28 EU Member States, including the UK.

Environmental specialist Julie Girling MEP and former Leader of UK Conservatives in the European Parliament Richard Ashworth MEP have left the hardline and much smaller ECR Group which David Cameron established when he took the Conservatives out of the EPP-ED in 2009.

Voted MEP of the Year in March 2017 by her fellow MEPs for her strong and constant support for animal welfare and tougher new targets to lower air pollution, Girling said: “The EPP is much closer to the pro-Europe Conservative Party that I originally joined, and which I have since loyally served, than is the increasingly hardline ECR.”

Girling continued: “For the remaining part of this European Parliamentary mandate, I will continue to fight for the interest of my constituents across South West England and Gibraltar from within the heart of the EPP. By working alongside colleagues from all 28 Member States in the European Parliament’s largest political group, I shall ensure that pro-European British beliefs are heard clearly at the heart of Europe.”

Respected Agriculture and Budgets specialist in the European Parliament Ashworth stated, “It is great to be back inside the EPP family. Together with my colleague and friend Julie Girling, I believe we can more effectively serve our constituents and the whole of our nation.”

UK EPP Leader Dirk Hazell concluded, “For the first time since 2009, from Margate to Land’s End and Gibraltar beyond, Britain is again capably represented within Europe’s leading political family, the EPP. Amidst the confusion and contortion of the Brexit debate currently absorbing the British body politic, pro-Europeans across the UK can take hope from this sign of better times to come. Two skilled and respected British MEPs are now at the heart of Europe fighting for British and European interests. ”

Will of the People?

4/1/2018

Britain's hard right have claimed the 2016 EU referendum expressed the will of the people with the largest ever mandate. For various reasons, we do not agree.

For example, the chart below shows elections and the 1975 referendum since 1950 where the share of the electorate supporting the winning side was greater than in 2016:-

The chart shows six elections/referendum since 1950 where more of the electorate voted for the winning side than in 2016.

The two front-runners are the 1975 referendum and Labour's result in 1951 (when a Conservative Government took office on fewer votes than Labour won: a bit like Trump and Clinton in 2016).

The chart below shows that the difference in the share of the electorate between winning and losing sides was more than 8 times greater in the 1975 referendum than in that of 2016:-

20% more of the electorate voted Remain in 2016 than voted Conservative in 2017.

Letter to Secretary of State for the Environment: more needed than "environmental champion" to prove case for "Green Brexit"

12/11/2017

"This follows your article in The Sunday Telegraph about what you call a Green Brexit and proposing a statutory environmental champion. You do not, of course, need Brexit to deliver such a champion and Parliament could not bind its successors regarding its remit.

It was a step forward in the 1990s when the Conservative Government established the Environment Agency. After an uncertain start it then matured, with Barbara Young as Chief Executive, as an environmental regulator and there are perhaps two immediately pertinent issues:

1 it combined the roles of environmental regulator, environmental advocate and undertaker of major public works. While the founding Secretary of State in creating a strong unified body for the environment might have made a step forward at the time, there is a case - with a Member State committed to the acquis - for disaggregating these functions; but

2 the Agency has not since 2010 proved effective at holding HMG at arm’s length: its operations have been more integrated with DEFRA’s. This is not exactly reliable evidence of enduring intent as regards your proposed champion.

The terms in which you refer to EU policies do not mitigate doubt. Indeed, it is hard to resist the suspicion that you propose a champion now to try to disarm the EU in the context of Brexit by appearing to neutralise comments of those of your closest colleagues who make no secret of their ambition to de-regulate and to undermine the precautionary principle.

Nor does talking down the EU’s environmental acquis constitute evidence of your Government’s wish and ability to do better. The practical reality has too often been of the UK government privately resisting environmental advance: might it perhaps be wiser not to provoke a reaction by disparaging the European Commission’s performance? That said, we would lobby for enhancing the power of the European Environment Agency so that it annually publishes audits of Member States’ environmental regulators in delivering compliance with the environmental acquis.

It is a fairly typical chronology that in 2013 your party resisted the EU’s proposed ban on neonicotinoids but now, following your recent announcement (which does not extend to opposing glyphosate), Conservative Party propaganda hails HMG as the bees’ saviour. The UK has too often struggled to attain EU environmental standards long regarded as a basic minimum by our most comparable EU neighbours.

To demonstrate that a Brexit Britain would be anything other than a return to a Dirtier Britain requires satisfying a very much higher evidential burden than proposing an advocate."

Speech by Dirk Hazell to Sevenoaks & Swanley Together in Europe

11/11/2017

We can win the war against Brexit if we fight battles for hearts and minds simultaneously on three fronts: left, centre and right leaning voters.

In the 1980s, the Conservative Group for Europe, keenly supported by local MP Michael Fallon by the way, was the dominant force in the European Movement.

Conservative governments tried to make Britain safer, stronger and more prosperous.

Conservative governments led in building up the world’s most successful ever peace project, our shared EU, which is now the world’s largest and most sustainable economy, the world’s leading social market and the world’s leading soft power.

So it’s really weird to see people I thought I’d known for more than a third of a century - Theresa May, Damian Green - going so far so fast in reverse.

Conservative voters frankly don’t expect Tory governments to:

trash the economy,

slash the police and armed forces,

make Britain a laughing stock on the world stage,

risk breaking up the UK and creating difficulty in Ireland,

put today’s interest of the Tory party ahead of tomorrow’s interest of Britain,

prioritise ideology over practical solutions for Britain’s current problems.

The Tory train is heading off the rails and over the cliff!

So long as we can stop Brexit before it happens, this Brexit fiasco as an opportunity to rebuild the British centre-right in a more traditionally moderate way offering Britain’s successor generations the best possible opportunities as European Citizens.

Brexit ideologues either fabricate a reactionary and inaccurate concept of sovereignty or pursue a largely concealed agenda of political authoritarianism and economic neoliberalism for which there is not the slightest hint of a political mandate in Britain.

These people are a blip, not the future.

The Conservative Party which I joined - and supported for a third of a century - unambiguously saw its main duty as defence of the realm from threats at home and abroad.

It accepted the distinctively European post 1945 settlement: the social market with a competitive economy and a safety net for all who needed it so everyone could become the best they could be.

It understood that its role was not to project divisive ideology but to be a balance against, and not for, ideologies of the moment.

It understood that it should promote economic growth on a basis promoting civil harmony.

An enduring if not always endearing feature of Toryism was also its resolutely magnetic attraction to power, yes supporting hierarchy at home, clinging to the USA as the Empire slipped away, but also within Europe working constructively within the leading political family, the EPP, and leading the rebuilding of Europe’s economic and geopolitical strength and unification of free Europe.

All this today is subordinated to an ideological quest for Brexit after an over-interpreted and poorly conducted advisory referendum.

Not surprisingly, given his experience as wartime PM, Winston Churchill - Conservative - wanted a United States of Europe and said in 1948 We cannot aim at anything less than the Union of Europe as a whole.

Our opponents say he didn’t want Britain to join in, but they’re factually wrong. He expressly supported Macmillan’s government in applying for membership.

And Macmillan - Conservative PM - said in 1962 that Britain wanted to be part of Europe together moving forward from an economic to a political union.

It was never just a market. This was always about rebuilding, as fellow democracies in partnership, Europe’s geopolitical capacity after devastating European civil war.

Edward Heath - Conservative PM - of course took Britain in.

Thatcher - Conservative PM - got Europe to agree our blueprint for a single market but perhaps even more significantly said that the main reason for being in Europe was peace and security.

She said The more closely we work together … the better our security will be from the viewpoint of the future of our children.

She also noted that being in Europe gave Britain a world role.

This is so … Tory!

And also, after the first direct elections to the European Parliament in 1979, it was Tory MEPs who strengthened the Parliament by, for example, reproducing Parliamentary Questions on the Westminster model.

Even Theresa May, before the referendum, stated that Britain would be more prosperous, more secure and more influential inside Europe.

Her speech of 25 April 2016 while unhelpful on human rights was in some ways a classic Conservative statement about Europe. It’s available on the Home Office website. It’s worth reading.

She spoke approvingly of the need to be in the EU to access the European Arrest Warrant and she claimed credit for the Passenger Name Records Directive, boasting that it could not have happened without British leadership and influence.

She spelled out Britain’s opportunities in the single market, noting that outside the EU London’s position as the world’s leading financial centre would be in danger.

She went into some detail about how difficult it would be to negotiate remotely acceptable trading agreements outside the EU.

And there were two other Tory themes:
But if Brexit isn’t fatal to the European Union, we might find that it is fatal to the union with Scotland.
But it shouldn’t be a notable exception when Britain leads in Europe: it should become the norm.
I believe the case to remain a member of the European Union is strong she concluded.

She’s become a PM who spends her time and our money obsessing on what she knows to be wrong for Britain.

Her “Brexit means Brexit” faustian pact to get into No 10 is her personal tragedy.

It must not become Britain’s tragedy.

With the help of events and with heroic effort we - local people leading locally across Britain - have a chance to turn this round.

I’ll conclude if I may with a more partisan observation.

After the referendum, our intuition was that Tory MPs would become vulnerable to a pro-EU centre-right challenge in constituencies which are both Conservative and pro-Europe.

We did our own opinion polling before the General Election and, without going into more detail, that confirmed our intuition. We believe this effect will get stronger and spread through 2018.
So I end by returning to my first sentence.

If there’s a General Election next year, Stop Brexit should be top priority.

We can and must win!

UK EPP WELCOMES DECISION BY TWO TOP BRITISH MEPS TO JOIN EPP GROUP IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

Will of the People?

Letter to Secretary of State for the Environment: more needed than "environmental champion" to prove case for "Green Brexit"

Speech by Dirk Hazell to Sevenoaks & Swanley Together in Europe

Petition: Hold a referendum on the final Brexit deal

Manfred Weber EPP Leader in European Parliament to May: please put Britain first not your party!

UK EPP Leader Dirk Hazell speaking at Manchester #StopBrexit rally 1 October 2017

UK EPP SUPPORTS UK STATISTICS AUTHORITY CHAIR

UK Statistics Authority Chair Cites "clear misuse of official statistics" by Foreign Secretary

RIP Simone Veil DBE - an icon of our New Europe

4 Freedoms Party (UK EPP)

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