Category: News & Analysis

New Union, New Name.

West Kent European Movement (WKEM)  was established as a branch of the European Movement UK many decades ago.
 
SSTIE – Sevenoaks Swanley & Tonbridge in Europe was established in 2017 following the 2016 Referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. It became affiliated with the European Movement UK soon afterwards.
 
The two groups remained separate despite them both being part of the EM family, and despite them both covering broadly the same geographical areas.
 
They have had the same aims and objectives but slightly different operating styles.  Like many campaigning organisations both groups went very quiet during the pandemic.
 
But other groups have woken up and are now back out in the big wide world again, and it is probably time that we joined them.
 
With a view to moving this forward we have taken a number of steps and made some changes.

  • WKEM and SSTIE have merged into a single organisation – West Kent for Europe.
  • and we have a new logo.
  • We now cover the constituencies of Sevenoaks & Swanley and Tonbridge & Malling (as we did before), and we have added Tunbridge Wells (where TWIN is sadly no longer active) and also Dartford (which has had no EM local group).

We are signing up to the EM Membership System. Other EM local groups that have done so have found that there are significant numbers of EM member who were not known to them. We hope that this will also be the case in West Kent.
 
These EM members that we do not yet have contact with will not of course receive this email, but we will contact them soon.

What are the Candidate’s positions on Brexit in the 2019 Election – Tonbridge and Malling Edition


As the 2019 General Election Campaign enters its final weeks, SSTIE has tried to distill the local candidates’ statements on Brexit, to try and give a better idea of their respective positions.

This page covers Tonbridge and Malling candidates – Sevenoaks is here.

Continue reading “What are the Candidate’s positions on Brexit in the 2019 Election – Tonbridge and Malling Edition”

What are the Candidate’s positions on Brexit in the 2019 Election – Sevenoaks and Swanley Edition.

As the 2019 General Election Campaign enters its final weeks, SSTIE has tried to distill the local candidates’ statements on Brexit, to try and give a better idea of their respective positions.

This page covers Sevenoaks and Swanley candidates — Tonbridge and Malling is here.

Continue reading “What are the Candidate’s positions on Brexit in the 2019 Election – Sevenoaks and Swanley Edition.”

Stop the Coup protest in Tonbridge

Hats off to Tonbridge Labour group for reacting quickly to the prorogation. The gathering in Tonbridge today had all-party support, with lots of Greens, LibDems and some remarkably outspoken Conservatives saying they’d voted Conservative all their lives and never would again. The demonstration included a number of Leave Voters were there too, objecting to the way Take Back Control was leading to Boris Johnson’s power-grab from parliament.

Heather Martin reports having walked to the demo with her “Yes to Europe. No to Boris” sign and being stopped by young people saying “Thank you for doing this!”

Continue reading “Stop the Coup protest in Tonbridge”

Polling shows growing support for staying in EU

Writing on website InFacts.org, former president of YouGov Peter Kellner analyses the latest YouGov surveys and highlights several important messages:

Staying in the EU now holds a commanding lead over the Government’s Deal:

Given a simple choice between the Government’s deal or Remain, 59% preferred Remain, 41% leaving with the Government’s deal.

Millions of 2016’s Leave voters have lost faith in Brexit’s ability to make life better

Considering only the people who voted Leave in 2016, just 24% of them believe that Brexit will make life better.

As recently as September this year, 43% of the same pool of Leave voters believed that life would be better after Brexit. That is a drop of one-third in three months!

The full article is available here.

 

Operation Stack after Brexit

What will happen to Operation Stack if Britain leaves both the Tax and Customs Union?

Whatever one’s views of Brexit are, it is undeniable that a reintroduction of customs and tax checks will result in much longer delays at the ports, and it is hard to see how this could be managed without impact on the roads of Kent.

The port of Dover and the Channel Tunnel see an average of at least 10,000 trucks per day, and the people of Kent are well aware of what can happen when this flow is interrupted by adverse weather or striking dock workers: The lack of geographical space in Dover and Ashford means that lorries have nowhere to park, and with such a volume of trucks there simply is no feasible alternative to turning large sections of the M2 and M20 motorways into temporary parking lots.

But how far will it go? Fears that Operation Stack could extend up the M20 as far as the M25 junctions at Swanley or Sevenoaks may seem far fetched, but on closer analysis they are not in the realm of the impossible.

As most recently seen during the strike by French dockyard workers in the summer of 2015, Operation Stack can extend over 30 miles as far as Maidstone, and there is little reason to think this marks the ultimate limit of how long it could become.

While it probably is extremely unlikely that it would extend as much as an extra 20 miles up the M20 to reach Swanley, it is just as unlikely that there would be no impact at all. A more realistic estimate would probably sit somewhere between these figures – taking us a further 5 miles up to Leybourne, or 10 miles as far as the M26 Junction at Wrotham.

Increased Frequency as the bigger Problem

While these are estimates based on what are currently extreme scenarios, there is another dimension to this debate that is far more important – rather than looking at how long the queues for Operation Stack could become, we should asking how often we will have to deal with it.

The answer to this is – much more often. The increasing frequency of Operation Stack is much more assured than its increasing length in distance.

A reintroduction of customs at the ports will cause delays no matter what the weather, so what are now seeing as extreme scenarios will become regular occurrences in future. The time it takes to inspect each vehicle being loaded onto a ferry or the train is simply too long to avoid doing so without causing long queues at customs controls. It is a problem that has long been recognised – and was long resolved – by the creation of the EU Customs Union.

—
Recommended Further reading: For more information on this subject, please see this report from the Road Haulage Association.

Beware of Mandate Creep

Mandate creep is not a word that is used often. Like it’s sibling, Mission Creep,  it means moving the goals of an endeavour beyond its original purpose, or “mission” in military terminology – and “mandate” in politics.

In politics, mandate creep happens when people in positions claim that they have the authority to do things they really don’t, and the behaviour of the May administration since the referendum on Exiting the European Union regrettably is perfect example of this. The reasons for this are as follows:

    1. There is absolutely no consensus as to what “Brexit” really means to the people – and politicians are now using this fact to pursue their own agendas.

      Referendum results with estimates of type of Brexit wanted. “Hard Brexit” refers to option 4 (No Deal), offered prior to the vote. “Soft Brexit” refers to the Norway, Switzerland and Canada options (models 1-3), showing that the majority of voters clearly prefers some kind of a deal. If you dispute the data, please comment below, stating reasons and/or sources to support your comment.
    2. The notion that the majority of voters support a Hard Brexit as is currently being advocated by the May administration has no basis in terms of a mandate derived from the Referendum. The campaign for “LEAVE” had 4 options on the UK’s future relationship with the EU, of which only one involved leaving the EU and single market without any new deal at all – an option which was notably derided as insane by most leading LEAVE campaigners. This means that even by the most optimistic estimates, not even half of the LEAVE voters supported the idea of a Hard Brexit. Given that less than 38% of the electorate supported the LEAVE vote overall, this places support for a Hard Brexit at barely 15%.
    3. For some LEAVE voters, the referendum was clearly little more than a protest vote against the Conservative government, and Camerons’s resignation was met by almost unanimous cheer among leave voters. Yet the conservative party itself has clung on to power, and now claims to have a mandate of speaking for the majority, and a minority within the Conservative Party is now defining Brexit on its own terms that often go against the expressed wishes of many leavers. For example, not all leave voters agree with the notion that ties to Europe should be replaced by closer ties to the USA, let alone authoritarian regimes in the Middle East – or anywhere else. Moreover, millions of health-conscious Brexiteers would object to a trade deal with the USA that requires a lowering of environmental and food safety standards to allow GMO, hormone- and chemically-treated foods onto the UK market, and even the staunchest anti-EU voices among British farmers, would have to conc that the contamination of our domestic food chain would result in an instant block of exports to the EU.

    4. Referendum results with leave vote segregated by political ideology. “Other” primarily refers to protest vote. These are estimates based on anecdotal data prior and since the referendum. If you dispute the data, please comment below, stating reasons and/or sources to support your comment.

      The lack of consensus over what Brexit really means is actually greatest among LEAVE voters. This is expressed in very different visions of Brexit that are totally incompatible with one another. They range from Anarcho-capitalist radicals to Far Right Nationalist and Far Left Utopianist, all of whom are now making competing claims for the mandate to define Brexit according to their extreme positions. The notion that Brexit should mean a choice between such extreme views has no mandate at all, since the silent majority of leave voters clearly a more moderate approach, and while the overall majority of voters prefer the status quo.

 

To sum up, any attempt to define a mandate for “Brexit” by the incumbent conservative government can only represent one vision of Brexit, and thus never have the full backing – and mandate from ALL leave voters.

In fact, there can be no consensus – and thus no true mandate – until the people are given a  vote on the type of Brexit they want – either directly via a new referendum – or indirectly via new elections.

 

For more info or to show your support for this, please see this petition.