Nineteen Eighty-Four

    Progressive European Party

One of the things that we can take from George Orwell's 1984 is that if you can control the past by the rewriting of it, then you can control the present. This is what happened to our world in 2016 and it has continued to happen since. Not the rewriting and editing of history as was being done in Orwell’s book. We can after all still read old newspapers and history books and still view old newsreels and documentaries unadulterated.

 

The rewriting that I am referring to has been done by the biased slant put on the social history of the UK from the end of WW2 until today. And on the pre-war era of Empire and global domination that this country prospered by. As well as the war years themselves where it is spun, we were standing alone against tyranny. 

I do not remember any of the anti-European Union spin doctors saying, make Britain great again, but that is what it amounted to. 

Looking at the past through rose coloured glasses and making out that there is a twenty-ninth member of the EU called Brussels that somehow tells all the other member states what to do. An oppressor that dominates our lives and takes away our freedom of choice and self-determination. That holds us back from once again being the greatest nation on earth is what has been spun. 

We can not rerun the 2016 referendum and even if we could the result would probably still be the same. The fact is that if you tell people what they want to hear then they tend to believe you. 

One recent new spin that has been put on our present predicament is that it is the remainers who have taken away the option of a “soft Brexit”. It is our opposition that has made only a hard Brexit now possible. Whereas the truth is no soft opinion was ever put on the table. If there had been a Norway deal on offer I for one would never have gone on all those Marches. 

The past is easily forgotten as it is diluted by the present. The present we have today is dominated by COVID19. The death of thousands of people is always going to be a far worse outcome than the negative effects of leaving the European Union without a pandemic was ever likely to have been. And if we are not careful after the bendy banana day of the First of January the benefits of EU membership will become a distant memory. 

As time goes by the job losses and social deprivation that is happening because of Covid will be hard to distinguish from the similar effects caused by Brexit. 

So how do we make our own spin on events that can distinguish between Covid and the loss of trade that will come about from Brexit? How can we make a new case for EU membership once lorry parks and the end of freedom of movement have become normalised as a part of life?

We took our eye off the ball before and were outmanoeuvred by people who only care about their own prosperity and don’t care at all about their fellow citizens. This was our fault, when were we in parliament square with our EU flags before 2016. Never as far as I can remember. We need to make sure that we do not make the same mistake again. So what should be our next move? As soon as the Covid restrictions are at last over we need to get back on the streets with our flags and never let them forget about the prosperity and economic security that we have lost. 

It is likely, it is almost a certainty, that the EU member states will recover economically from the pandemic far faster than we can by standing alone. They will also be taking an economic hit from Brexit but it will be nowhere as bad as the one that we will be suffering from. Pointing to the EU as an example of where we could be today if we have stayed a member is a good starting point for our campaign. We have to make a strong case that can be distinguished from the downturn in the economy caused by Covid and we need to start doing so now. 

Philip Notley 

ProgressiveEuropeanParty@gmail.com