Brexitwatch: to keep Britain in the EU write to your MP NOW

The moment of truth is approaching. Once Theresa May activates Article 50, it will become much more difficult to keep Britain in the EU. So if you want to prevent Brexit, it is important to write to your MP NOW. It is generally believed that MPs are more impressed by letters than emails.

My MP is Sir Keir Starmer, who happens to be Labour's spokesperson on Brexit, but what I have written to him could be used as the basis for a letter to any MP. I reproduce it below:-

Sir Keir Starmer, MP,

House of Commons,

London, SW1A 0AA

23 January 2017

Dear Sir Keir,

I call on you and your Labour Party colleagues to oppose the government’s plan to activate Article 50 and give notice that we will leave the EU.

You and your colleagues are behaving as though they are compelled to go along with Brexit, but you are not.

Throughout the campaign, one of the leading demands of the Brexit side was that the UK Parliament should be sovereign. Well, the UK Parliament decided that the referendum on EU membership should be advisory only. There is, therefore, no legal requirement to take us out of the EU.

Nor is there any moral requirement. The Leave side won by a very narrow majority (which, judging from by-election results since the vote, has already evaporated) in a referendum in which almost 30 per cent of people abstained.

The Leave victory was secured by a systematic campaign of lies and deception (as has been admitted by a number of the Brexit leaders) and its leadership offered no coherent alternative to EU membership.

So if you and your Labour colleagues vote to support the triggering of Article 50, in spite of the fact that the vast majority of your constituents and of Labour voters support staying in the EU, that is a CHOICE that you are making.

And I find it difficult to understand how any MP who cares about the future of our country could make such a choice. There is no evidence of any kind that leaving the EU will benefit us, and a huge volume of evidence that we will be harmed by quitting.

In those circumstances you and your colleagues have a duty to do everything in your power to prevent this disastrous step. This is the most crucial decision Parliament has had to make in decades, and your duty to your country and your constituents outweighs any considerations of party loyalty.

As an intelligent man, you must know that once you allow the government to trigger Article 50, leaving the EU will be inevitable. Even if you can persuade Theresa May to seek Parliamentary approval for the deal she has been able to negotiate with 27 other countries, the European Parliament etc (good luck with that one, Theresa!) you will be faced with a fait accompli.

You will either have to accept the terms she comes back with, however bad they may be, or leave with no agreement at all, which would be a complete disaster.

No. Labour cannot sit on the fence any longer. This is the last chance to keep us in the EU. It is fight or flight time, put up or shut up. And if Labour continues its present policy of chasing the UKIP vote, I fear the wipe out in Scotland will be repeated in many other parts of the country.

Theresa May has no coherent plan for a viable alternative to EU membership. She does not even appear to know whether, once activated, Article 50 can be revoked if negotiations show that the Brexit the British people have been promised cannot be delivered.

For my part, I will not be voting for any politician or political party that supports leaving the EU.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,