To beat Brexit, we have to bulldoze the lies

Remain should have won the 2016 referendum. Of course, we should have done.

We should have won. We could have won. And we would have won, with an entirely different campaign.

The Remain campaign never expected to lose. That was their mistake number one.

They were driven by aloof, smug, complacency. They thought they could easily win with a campaign that instilled fear into the British people.

Forecasts of doom.

But they should have learnt from the Blitz: the British people cannot be cowed or scared into submission.

On the other hand, the Leave campaigns were brilliant, compelling and charismatic. Albeit, all based on lies, mistruths and false promises.

Too little was done by the Remain campaign to demolish those lies, mistruths and false promises.

There was no effective counter-attack. There was no brilliant, compelling and charismatic campaign by Remain.

And the problem for Remain today? There is still no brilliant, compelling and charismatic campaign to demolish the lies of Leave.

(Article continues after 9-minute video)

We can perhaps understand the complacency prior to the referendum. For most of the 40 years of our membership of the EU, leaving was never a mainstream call or demand.

Prior to the referendum, leaving was only a general election pledge once – by Labour, under the leadership of Michael Foot, for the election of 1983.

Labour’s manifesto then promised:

‘On taking office we will open preliminary negotiations with the other EEC member states to establish a timetable for withdrawal.’

But Labour spectacularly lost that election, giving the Tories led by Margaret Thatcher a landslide victory, achieving their best results since 1935.

Ardent Eurosceptic Labour MP, Tony Benn, lost his seat.

No mainstream British party again promised withdrawal from the European Community, until of course, after the referendum of 2016.

Then both the Tories and Labour promised to “respect” the referendum result to leave the EU, despite both the Conservative government and the Labour opposition previously warning the nation that leaving was not in our interests and would damage Britain.

But in the decades before that referendum, leaving wasn’t on the agenda.

Yes, we’d had 40 years of nasty, untrue stories about the EU and migrants in some sections of our media. A daily discharge of drip-fed hate against anything EU, and blaming migrants for our problems.

But even despite that, it was only a minority in Britain that wanted us to leave: a small number on the fringes of the main parties, and a small party called UKIP, that only had one MP.

Something dramatically changed during the referendum campaign.

For the first time, it wasn’t just the likes of the Daily Mail and Daily Express that inculcated their readers with hostility towards the EU and migrants.

For the first time, the entire country was pervaded with the virus of these false claims, under the guise of ‘balance’ required by electoral law for the referendum hustings.

All the UK was exposed to a massive national platform and loudspeaker that blamed the EU, and migrants, for the country’s misfortunes.

It was on TV, it was in all the newspapers, it was on hoardings by the roadside. It was everywhere. It was called balance.

But where was the balance for the Remain campaign?

The Remain side didn’t have anything, even remotely effective, by way of a counterstrike.

All this was avoidable, if only there had been a national awareness raising campaign about the EU during the four decades before the referendum.

If that had happened, the chances are we’d never have had a referendum, or else, the win for Remain would have been decisive.

So few people in Britain understand anything about the EU; how it functions, and how it benefits members.

Turnout for European Parliamentary elections in the UK is truly abysmal, which is hardly surprising.

So many people in the UK don’t even know that there is a democratically elected European Parliament, let alone what it does.

We’d known since at least six years before the referendum that the Tories, exclusively among the main parties, wanted another referendum on Europe.

That was the time to launch a national awareness raising campaign about the EU. Not doing so was a careless mistake.

But here’s the thing.

Not launching a national awareness campaign about the EU immediately following the referendum was a catastrophic mistake.

It’s now almost three years since the referendum result, and millions across Britain still don’t know that the EU is a democracy, run by its members for the benefit of its members.

Worse, many believe the exact opposite.

• They believe that the EU is run by unelected bureaucrats.
• They believe that decisions are made by Brussels without any say by Britain.
• They believe that the EU membership fee does not offer good value for money.
• They believe that too many migrants are the cause of the nation’s problems.
• They believe that in the EU, the UK loses sovereignty.
• They believe that the EU accounts are never signed off.

And more.

And all untrue.

There’s been no national awareness raising campaign in the UK about the EU. There never has been.

We are leaving the EU, based on ignorance about what precisely we are leaving.

It’s all very well campaigning for a Peoples Vote. But in my view, little point in doing so, without at the same time campaigning to win that vote.

Winning means raising awareness about the EU.

We urgently need an awareness campaign to finally, and fully, demolish all the lies that were used by the Leave campaign to unfairly win the 2016 referendum.

We know that awareness campaigns work, but they usually take years, not weeks.

Whatever happens next, we are likely to need an ongoing, day in and day out, awareness campaign about the EU for at least the next decade.

But what about now?

Well, here’s my succinct advice on how to win the next referendum, if there is one.

And it may surprise readers that my advice on how to win applies both to the Remain and Leave sides.

The country is split on this issue. Although consistent polling now indicates that Remainers outnumber Leavers, there are still deep divisions across the country about EU membership.

If you’re in business with a product that around half your customer base profoundly distrusts, you have a serious problem. No business lasts long on that basis.

A new referendum would give a new opportunity for all sides to present their case to an electorate that now believes they were not given sufficient information in 2016.

Now is the chance, for the first time, to present the facts that nobody had in 2016.

We should all relish the opportunity. A second chance to present your product - whether it’s a Brexit deal, no deal, or no Brexit - to an uncertain nation is one everyone should now welcome.

To see this issue settled, and to help heal a divided nation, we need a decisive result next time that we didn’t get in 2016.

The former Prime Minister, David Cameron, said that leaving the EU, or remaining, was a once in a generation decision. He was absolutely right.

The problem is that the referendum of 2016 didn’t provide a clear and conclusive decision.

The nation was split on the issue, very almost half and half, and the margin for Leave was wafer thin.

Now, over 60 polls since the 2017 general election demonstrate that the nation doesn't want Brexit, now that we have a clearer idea what Brexit means.

But if we have a new referendum, whether it returns a decision to continue with Brexit, or to abandon it, we will still need a national awareness raising campaign about the EU for many years ahead.

• If we remain, we’ll need an awareness campaign to ensure that there is no appetite for another Brexit referendum.
• If we leave, we’ll need an awareness campaign to prepare the nation to consider re-joining the EU.

There is no escaping the fact that Britain urgently needs a national awareness campaign to explain the facts about the EU.

We’ve never had one. It’s time we did. Because we cannot let the lies win. The remedy is the truth.

? Commentary and video edit by Jon Danzig

? Please re-Tweet, and follow Reasons2Remain on Twitter: twitter.com/Reasons2Remain/status/1098319522040291329