THE chair of a campaign to get the UK back into the EU says rejoining in some way is now “inevitable” and Brexit will one day be looked on as the country “losing its marbles”.
Dr Mike Galsworthy said European Movement UK (EMUK) has seen membership surge this year, with around 1000 people a month signing up.
He visited Scotland yesterday to attend a rally in Glasgow as well as meet with sister organisation European Movement in Scotland (EMiS) to discuss how to the boost the campaign.
Speaking ahead of the visit, he told the Sunday National: “The mood in Scotland is very different as in Scotland people talk about [Brexit] a lot more openly and at the government level they can address it fully as they should. In England, there is a weird omerta.
“I think what is happening – and this is the country over – those people who supported Brexit previously are falling out of love with it and those people who supported Remain previously and now having come through years of frustration are actually seeing the dynamics are turning around.
“Regardless of the Labour Party trying to avoid it and the LibDems often being quite shy, we can all see the polls opening up at real pace just over the past year.
“It is now overwhelmingly if you ask people whether they would like to stay out or join the EU, then they say rejoin. Maybe with the Scots that is no surprise, but in the country of the UK as a whole, the mood is really changing.”
He added: “Particularly in England the Conservative party are trying to say they can make Brexit work and the Labour party trying to say they can make Brexit work and the LibDems not committing to rejoin, to whom do people turn outside of Scotland?
“That’s where we are hoovering up the support at the moment.”
A recent poll published by YouGov found that seven years on from the referendum on leaving the EU, 46% say they would vote to rejoin against just 33% who want to stay out of Europe. A further 9% said they would not vote and 9% said they didn’t know.
The headline figure of 58% rejoin compared to 42% stay out compares to the referendum result in 206 of 52% Leave compared to 48% Remain. In 2016 Scotland voted to stay in the EU by 62% to 38%.
Meanwhile a report published by the Scottish Government last week outlining the scale of damage caused by Brexit highlighted an expected loss of £3 billion per year in public revenues and food price inflation at a 45-year high with Brexit responsible for an estimated one third of it.
Galsworthy said it was welcome the SNP had championed the issue, but stressed the European Movement campaign was cross-party and aimed to “nurture pro-Europeanism” in all political parties.
He went on: “Democracy shouldn’t just be about picking red ties, blue ties or yellow ties to lead you, it should also be about genuine democracy, power of the people including on single issues like this.
“This is a single-issue campaign and it is a campaign to pressure politicians via the public to do what most of the public now want.”
Galsworthy said membership of EMUK had grown by around 2500 since March to reach 20,000 and a drive was underway to recruit more supporters.
He said it could realistically be a 10-year project but hoped one day Brexit will be looked back on as the “country losing its marbles at a point in time”.
“Life is long and history is even longer and so even though lots of people feel very frustrated with where we are now and stuck in the mud – we have people like Jacob Rees-Mogg believing that Brexit is forever, I don’t see it that way,” he said.
“I see it turning around so quickly that it feels that it’s nigh on inevitable we will build back with Europe.
“The question is do we have the pace and momentum and willpower and enthusiasm to do it as the whole hog and join outright and be a proper enthusiastic member again?
“Or will we get stuck at a mealy mouthed half-way place? That is what I am hoping we avoid.”
