Above: Celebrating my becoming an MEP with friends in the Pakistani community who I represented as a councillor.
Becoming an MEP was the last thing I expected
Since I stood for election to the European Parliament in 2014 and, again, missed out narrowly, I have taken a relatively low profile in political life. While I always knew it was a possibility, were Anneliese Dodds to become unable to continue as an MEP I would be asked to step into the role. I considered it a highly unlikely possibility and got on with earning a living.
My political ‘career’ (though I never considered it a job as such) had borne fruit for the town that I served and for the wards I represented and I was content with that. After a gruelling campaign across the vast constituency that is South East England, I needed a break from front line politics.
Of course I continued to advise my colleagues and provide services to elected Labour representatives of all hues through the business I ran, but I was happy to find new challenges for my political abilities in the public affairs world and was lucky to do so.
Nobody could have predicted the things that would happen in the three years that followed. Early in 2015, at a chance of many millions to one, I found myself standing in the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. My step daughter was on life support after a bleed in her brain and we were told she had a less than 50% chance of making it through the night. As life-changing experiences go that comes pretty high up the list and the months that followed were tough. Luckily for Alex she is 98% recovered – a massively strong and determined young woman to tackles issues head on (as she like to have it). She’s off to university in September.
That experience tells you to live your one and only life to the full and take the opportunities on offer – not that I needed any encouragement to accept Labour’s nomination and take up my seat in Europe. What politician in their right mind would say no to being involved at the centre of the great issue of the day with some change, however slight, to have influence?
Deep disquiet in the business community
Since the referendum in 2016, in the process of earning a living, I was attending a lot of business networking. The elephant in the room was always the narrow decision to leave the European Union. Most of us, Labour, Conservative, Liberal or none of the above, had the same question that we would have put to the likes of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove if we had the chance: exactly where are these ‘new opportunities’ that are going to arise when we leave? What will enable my business to trade more effectively? How will we continue to sell in Europe as easily and routinely as we have and do right now? Because I, for one, am hearing nothing of any substance, little other than platitudes and repeated assertions.
What we do now know wholly and conclusively was how comprehensively people were lied to: the big fat lie of £350m a week for the NHS – even Nigel Farage disclaimed that one; the lie that there was no threat to our membership of the Single Market – many of the Leave campaigners repeated that one and they didn’t even mention the Customs Union; and of course the biggest lie of all, that migration to the UK could be stopped when so many sectors of the UK economy and public services depend upon workers from overseas – whether it is picking fruit or looking after our infirm and elderly and the lie that we could “have our cake and eat it”.
First the absurd idea that there can be a divorce without a financial settlement – something at least a third of the UK population know through their own experience is rarely if ever true. Then finally the biggest deceitful promise – that we will have a ‘deal’ that delivers “exactly the same benefits as we get from the Single Market and the Customs Union”. Their promise, not mine, quite right that the UK Conservative Government be held to account and quite right that Labour should seek to do so.
A year on and no answers from the Conservatives
I’m hearing no answers from the Conservative Government. No vision of life outside the EU beyond the notion of the UK as an offshore tax haven in which the wealthy can prosper and where the rest can sink or swim, maybe. It isn’t good enough and it is a central reason why Mrs May failed in her attempt to sweep aside all opposition to that view.
We owe it to the millions of people who feel they have had their future stolen from them to work hard to continue to expose the lies and do the best we can to protect the future of the UK – not as an abstract notion but in the real measure of the day-to-day lives and welfare of our fellow citizens. Repairing the damage that has already been done will take at least ten years – it is incumbent on those of us with any influence to use it to try to prevent as much damage of possible and hope in the meantime that the nation wakes up to what is happening.
