The big question was whether to exit. The bigger question is how to exit, for it will decide our future. No one disputes that we are at the crossroads – but which path to take, and what can we as citizens do at this point?
Until recently many were pressing for a more inclusive approach: to provide for all eventualities, defend our common interest, permit extension of negotiations, and allow us to consider other types of relation with the EU, measured against current arrangements. But then came the snap election.
May says the country is united behind Brexit. May says she is calling an election to unite Westminster. May says that otherwise parliamentary process – division and debate – will encourage EU negotiators to try and strike an unfavourable deal.
Others say the government is getting the election out of the way before we wake up (as early as the July budget) to the economic consequences of Brexit. They say an election landslide will paralyse scrutiny and give the next government a blank cheque to pursue Brexit at all costs.
May says she will countenance a vote in 2019: either accept the negotiated deal or leave with no deal. Either way, we look set to leave the customs union and our largest export market in the hope of a brighter free-trading future.
Others say the referendum did not give this government or the next government the mandate it seeks.
If all voices are to be heard on June 8th, the speed of the election must be met with an equivalent response. This includes tactical voting to support election candidates from across the board who want what is best for Britain, who question the democratic principle and economic prospects of what this government is proposing.
Brexit is a unique event in our island story, a momentous drama of people, politics and power. It requires our presence. Join us on May 2nd.
Gina Miller
Gina Miller co-founded SCM Direct in 2009 as a disruptive investment manager offering low access to high end wealth management. She also founded the True and Fair Foundation, which works with small, high impact community charities. Gina has worked in the UK retail financial services sector since 1996 and is passionate about transparency, accountability and consumer protection. Her True and Fair Campaign to end unscrupulous behaviour in the financial sector has included contributions to three EU Directives in 2014 – MiFID II, PRIPS, and the Shareholder Directive.
Her business principles are characterised by transparency, efficiency and ethics and as a conscious capitalist all her businesses have included a profit for purposes model.
Gina served on the development board at the Centre for Social Justice for two years and co-authored reports on modern day slavery, social justice and the charity sector.
In 2016, Gina was the lead claimant in an historic constitutional legal case against the UK Government seeking to preserve Parliamentary sovereignty by claiming that the Government could not bypass Parliament and trigger Article 50 without primary legislation.
Jeremy O'Grady
Jeremy O’Grady, editor-in-chief of The Week.
After graduating from Cambridge, Jeremy O'Grady studied for an MA in political science at Cornell University. Back in England he worked as a researcher in local government before beginning a ten-year stint as a censor at the British Board of Film Classification.
In 1995, he teamed up with Jolyon Connell to launch The Week. As founding editor, Jeremy helped devise the magazine's unique house style, and played a key role in its early development. Jeremy is also a co-founder of Intelligence Squared, London's premier debating forum. He is married (to The Week's editor, Caroline Law) and lives in west London.
Jo Maugham QC
Jo Maugham became a Queen’s Counsel in 2015. In 2016, The Lawyer featured him as one of only 10 members at the Bar in their ‘Hot 100 2016’. And he was described by The Times as ‘one of the country’s leading barristers’. He has advised both the UK government and Ed Miliband’s Labour Party on tax policy and is a key opinion former in the field.
Jo is the founder and director of the Good Law Project, a not for profit which uses the law to advance progressive values. He is currently pursuing litigation against Uber’s London entity to establish whether it is avoiding £200m per annum of value added tax and a case before the High Court in Dublin to establish whether the United Kingdom can unilaterally revoke Article 50. He crowdfunded both cases along with a case that ran alongside Gina Miller’s to challenge the Government’s position that Article 50 could be triggered by Royal Prerogative.
He is a regular contributor in the national media. He has written for the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Times and others. He is a former Chair of Gingerbread, the Charity for Single Parent Families, and the Fatherhood Institute.
Roger Graef
Roger Graef OBE is a filmmaker, writer and criminologist. He is best known for his films inside closed institutions, including the UN, the UK government, and the EU Commission. His film INSIDE THE BRUSSELS HQ was made to coincide with the first UK referendum. His many films in Europe cover the arts, politics, urbanism and science, most recently a series of short films on the search for the Higgs Bosun at CERN. He has done a number of co-productions with European broadcasters, most notably for the itv series INSIDE EUROPE, the largest ever current affairs co-production. As a criminologist, he is a Visiting Professor at the LSE, and was an Expert Member of the European Analytical College of Crime Prevention in Paris. He is the first documentary maker to be awarded the Bafta Fellowship for Lifetime Achievement.
Stanley Johnson
Stanley Johnson, writer, journalist, former MEP and Co-chairman of Environmentalists For Europe. Author of the Brexit thriller Kompromat (Published 28/9/17).
