@afneil They told me that repeatedly... meeting after meeting.
I told them even if they won on that basis, that establishes no positive legacy for why we should stay in EU & build. It offered no future. They didn’t listen. They told me they were going to get it over the line & be done.
I told them even if they won on that basis, that establishes no positive legacy for why we should stay in EU & build. It offered no future. They didn’t listen. They told me they were going to get it over the line & be done.
@afneil Also, they were utterly wrong with that conjecture.
They told all groups to echo their core message of Brexit = economic destruction- and not to bother with positive “complex” arguments. But from what I could see in all my interactions, people wanted to *understand*...
They told all groups to echo their core message of Brexit = economic destruction- and not to bother with positive “complex” arguments. But from what I could see in all my interactions, people wanted to *understand*...
@afneil ... and we were not providing any explanation of why things were how they were- what was building well, how we’d build the EU science programme, single market, network of global trade deals— where this could all lead if only the UK stepped up and led our continent...
@afneil We were in fact in a leading position. Germany never wanted to lead. France is always too chaotic. Many EU countries looked to the Brits.
There we sat in 2015 - on top of that platform, as gateway to Single Market for Asia, the link-point for US-European relations...
There we sat in 2015 - on top of that platform, as gateway to Single Market for Asia, the link-point for US-European relations...
@afneil ... and all we needed to do was 1) re-distribute the wealth we reaped from it to all regions and explain that’s what we were doing and 2) make UK govt decisions at EU level that reflected public will - make that chain from public to policy more direct 3) explain how we lead EU...
@afneil ... but instead, leading Brexiteers claimed we were victims. They said that we, the 5th largest economy in the world, were voiceless, bullied, pushed around by faceless bureaucrats and an invisible “dictator” - encouraged us to get angry, sulk, withdraw...
@afneil ... and now after years of domestic chaos - we have a deal that very visibly shrinks our sovereignty. It pulls back our heft to our own shores and disempowers us in our continent and the world on levels of individuals (FoM), industries (sci, regs) & nation state. That’s #Brexit
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