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Keep the Brexit alliance strong

Simon Gibbs

First of all thank you for letting me come and be here today. I am honoured to be able to address you. More so, because I appreciate that not many of you know me and I do not know many of you. There is a danger I will appear rude and I want you know I am sensitive to that.

Also, I want you know I have come here today in the hope and the expectation that I am wasting my breath. The problem is that with all the lies and misrepresentation and exaggerations and cherry-picking perpetrated by the mainstream media it is hard to know what my Brexit voting countrymen are really thinking. So I have come as precaution to make sure some things are understood.

Brexit won fair and square by 1 million two hundred and sixty nine (and a half) thousand votes. A 4% margin of victory on the day our leaders seem in fact to have given up. They were being told they were toast. That is amazing and deserves to be respected.

More than half of leave voters told Lord Ashcroft pollsters that they wanted democracy. They wanted to be free of the compromise of that ideal repressed by the outgoing constitutional arrangement. Democracy was therefore the biggest single motivation- bar none – for people voting for Brexit. Some prominent activists, such as Martin Durkin, were deliberately at pains to avoid mentioning the second most popular factor – immigration.

I am hear to make a very simple point. I favour, subject to security service vetting, a norm of open borders and free immigration for anyone willing to pay their way. I voted Leave for reasons not at all related to that preference. I too voted for democracy and for international trade. I did not get polled by Lord Ashcroft but for 14% of those leave voters that did, immigration was literally the last thing on their mind.

Consider that your margin of victory is 4%. That 14% translates into about 7% of the electorate. If there is to be a second referendum and you have alienated that 7% then this alliance will crumble and the EU will win. They will win and you will never get a chance to defeat them again.

Thank you for listening.

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One response to “Keep the Brexit alliance strong”

  1. Paul Marks Avatar
    Paul Marks

    No surprise that the BBC only showed old people – people more my age than yours.

    I agree with you – although my definition of “security vetting” might be different to yours. My position is that it is the belief system that someone holds (everyone has some belief system – they really do), must not be hostile to this country – if it is, it would be better if they did not come here. A country should not be a war zone – there should be a common loyalty so that people can live in peace.

    But all that is beside the point – the point is that an extra layer of government (the E.U.) should not be allowed to impose its laws upon us (the endless regulations imposed on our INTERNAL affairs – and on our trade with third parties). Without our consent to these laws.

    It is bad enough for laws to be imposed with majority consent – I would rather than was an end to all this “legislation” on top of the Common Law. But for endless regulation to be imposed on-top-of-this without any consent is just too much.

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