Campaigns

By Bev Haigh-Jones

Street stall latest

“We have recently held a stall in St Austell, the first one in the town since 2019, and since our board questions included one which specifically related to you and the current government, we thought that we should share the results.

“As you can see, the results are fairly conclusive and mirror the results that we are experiencing in other areas of Cornwall, and indeed, those found by other 4EU groups across the UK. People have a very low opinion of the government and its actions, they are mostly in favour of an early election, and the majority have not benefited at all from Brexit. This would seem to confirm the results of all recent national polls which suggest that as many as 63% of the UK population would now vote to rejoin the EU, given the opportunity to vote again.

“Previous stalls in St Austell, both before, and in the few years after the referendum, indicated support for Brexit and the Tory government, so we hope that you might find the attached Opinionometer details of interest, since it clearly suggests that opinions are changing.

“We would also like to issue an invitation. Cornwall for Europe have a monthly newsletter which goes out to all our supporters and, for quite a few months now, we have been producing a series of articles called, ‘Assessing party policy – the word from our local representatives’. These articles have been based on a transcript of Q&A sessions held over Zoom with our small committee, then shared with our member base via the newsletter. The format for the meetings is a statement of party and personal policy from the representative, (not specifically Brexit related), followed by a Q&A session with the committee members present. As a group, we are non-party political and so far we have held talks with Labour, Liberal Democrats (2), Greens and Mebyon Kernow, but we have yet to speak to a representative of the Tory party, despite our best efforts. We wondered whether perhaps you might like to help us fill that gap? If you would be agreeable to this suggestion, perhaps you could let us know and we could arrange things for one of our future meetings, which are held via Zoom on the first Wednesday of each month at 7.30 pm.

“We look forward to hearing from you.”

Sadly, as with the reaction from Derek Thomas MP to the Opinionometer in his constituency of St Ives/Penzance, the response was not encouraging. The reply was sent to me personally, (I’m one of his constituents), rather than to Cornwall for Europe, and stated the following opinions.

• The St Austell constituency voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU in the referendum and again in the general election of 2019.
• It is a position I will be reiterating when the general election comes. 
• While on democracy and polling, there is only one poll that counts of course and that is in the ballot box at election time. 
• Anyone or party that believes the public wish to return to the EU should put it in their election manifesto and seek a mandate from the electorate.

There was no reference to our invitation to take part in one of our meetings in order to promote his opinions to his constituents, so we took that to be a refusal.

Unfortunately, the street stall that we had planned for Friday 1 December in Truro was postponed because of bad weather. Although most of the snow had cleared by Friday, with a temperature of three degrees it would have been very unfair to expect our volunteers to stand on a Truro pavement for two and a half hours hoping to persuade passersby to engage. We had hoped to do the stall on Friday 8 December instead, but again the weather was not in our favour. No snow and higher temperatures, but with a forecast of rain and high winds – that is never ideal for having a table on the streets with leaflets, membership forms and Opinionometer boards. We will be back out as soon as the weather allows, though.

Next street stall event

Stalls are always more difficult at this time of year, but that doesn’t mean that they grind to a halt. Inclement weather does occasionally result in a postponement, or cancellation, but we do avoid that if we can.

If all goes to plan and the weather is kind, we will have been out on the streets again on Friday 15 December in Truro, but too late to report on it this time around. With the Christmas market in full swing and with only two weeks to go from then until Christmas, we should have had plenty of passersby to engage with and we will hope to bring you an interesting report and Opinionometer result in the next edition.

Whether the above stall goes ahead or not, we’ll be arranging further stalls in the new year, so do keep an eye out for announcements. Full details will be posted on our Facebook Events page and on our website.

Embrace Erasmus+

“The Young European Movement, in partnership with European Movement UK and the British Youth Council, is calling on the UK Government to restore Britain’s membership of the Erasmus+ Programme, which was ended abruptly in 2020 despite promises of its continuation.”

After the success of the campaign to rejoin Horizon where we have at least become associate members, YEM and EMUK are now campaigning for the UK to rejoin the Erasmus+ scheme. They are running a petition to gain support and you can sign it, as well as obtaining more details of the campaign via this link.