The Prime Minister's 'Rejoin the EU' comments put a huge burden on responsibility of EMUK's shoulders
How can we meet the challenge? This is HHEM's call to the rest of our great movement:
For the first time since the 2016 Brexit referendum, the British government has officially stated that rejoining the European Union is an option that the government will be examining (https://www.politico.eu/article/andy-burnham-reconsider-push-rejoin-eu/).
That puts a very heavy responsibility on European Movement UK's shoulders - because we are the only major UK-wide organisation whose specific job is to persuade the British public to support that course of action.
Clearly the government will only opt for rejoining the European Union if it thinks it can carry a substantial majority of the UK public with it (thus, crucially, helping to enable it to win a general election).
At present only around 50 percent of the public supports rejoining the European Union (https://www.whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/should-the-united-kingdom-join-the-european-union-or-stay-out-of-the-european-union/). That is sadly not very different from the 48% 'remain' vote in 2016!
Clearly, in order to make the government more confident that committing to try to rejoin would not be to its electoral disadvantage, that percentage will need to rise to at least 60 to 65% (and remain steady at that sort of level).
Crucially that would also make the European Union more confident that, if allowed to rejoin, Britain would not be likely to decide to leave a second time!
So, winning over the public has to be EMUK’s number one objective.
But selecting which specific pro-Europe issues we should campaign on is only part of what will be required from us. (To see our 10 suggestions, please click here).
Equally important is for EMUK to ensure that our campaigns achieve eight very specific objectives.
So here is a crucial 'tick list' of what those objectives should be:
1) To massively increase EMUK's name recognition (at present less than 1% of the UK public has ever heard of us!).
2) To influence public opinion (although support for Brexit has massively shrunk, support for rejoining the European Union has not shot up commensurately. It's still only around 50%)
3) To inspire our members and activists - so that our local groups can re-energise themselves and thrive. Sadly at present many of our local groups are relatively inactive with no real street presence.
4) To recruit vastly more members (with current very low name recognition and relatively low profile public campaigning, recruitment has virtually stalled). At present only around 0.05% of the UK public are EMUK members!
5) To generate vastly more national media coverage
6) To influence politicians to a much greater degree. That can only occur if we are widely perceived as a genuinely very large, proactive and influential organisation
7) To attract vastly more donations. Again that can only happen if we have massively greater name recognition and are widely perceived as being a very large and successful organisation.
8) And last but not least, to massively expand our branch network. At present some 95% of UK towns and urban centres have no functioning, let alone visible European Movement presence. If we are to succeed that must change.
But of absolutely paramount importance is how we achieve those eight key objectives.
Up till now, EMUK has never deployed a really effective comprehensive campaigning strategy (geared to achieving the eight goals above).
So here are the crucial specific ‘full throttle' campaigning methods that, at minimum, need to be deployed:
A) All EMUK campaigns need to be designed not only to be hard-hitting and relevant - but also, very specifically, to try to guarantee widespread and prominent media coverage. Many may see that as a tall order - but, with the right approach, it can be achieved.
B) To obtain that sort of media coverage, each EMUK campaign needs to be preceded (well in advance) by a research operation to find genuinely new newsworthy angles/stories that news editors genuinely want to cover. Normally speaking, those major new news stories should be given to all newspapers simultaneously (not normally as exclusives to only one!). The researchers, journalists, videographers and other experts on the EMUK skills inventory definitely have the skills to find and document the angles and stories that each campaign will need in order to generate good media coverage. Those skilled volunteers should be used. Sadly at present EMUK is, on the whole, not using them!
C) As part of each campaign, EMUK should initiate a major petition on Parliament's website (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Parliament_petitions_website). Reaching over 100,000 signatures normally guarantees that Parliament will convene a House of Commons debate on the issues raised by the petition. That in turn, can generate further media coverage and consequently reach yet more people. What's more, parliamentary website petitions provide a continuously updated account of exactly how many people are signing in each parliamentary constituency. That again serves to generate additional local and regional media coverage - and can help incentivize our local groups to further promote each petition. Sadly EMUK has never initiated such parliamentary petitions - almost certainly because doing so would not allow EMUK HQ to data-harvest!
D) Again, as part of each campaign, EMUK needs to arrange for some of its supporters in Parliament (MPs and Lords) to ask parliamentary questions and Prime Minister's Questions (or PNQs in the Lords) and to move Early Day Motions (or QSDs in the Lords), etc. Again all that can be used to generate additional media coverage and will also bolster local group campaigning. But pre-preparing the questions that MPs etc could raise is crucial and that should also be a task for a badly-needed EMUK (skills-inventory-derived) research team.
E) Once again, as part of each and every campaign, EMUK must proactively and effectively encourage and persuade EMUK members, supporters and local groups to lobby their MPs and local civil society organisations and to campaign on local streets.
F) Prior to each campaign, EMUK headquarters needs to produce really good leaflets and other material (car stickers, window posters etc) for members and our local groups to deploy at street level. At present, on the whole, EMUK does not produce such material. Really good leaflets and campaigning material should be designed to inspire and enable local groups to become much more active at street level. One of the main reasons why many local groups are not currently very active in their high streets is because appropriate relevant high quality campaigning leaflets etc are simply not available from EMUK headquarters.
G) EMUK also needs to pre-produce (for each and every campaign) properly researched briefing papers that can be used by members, local groups, the media, MPs, Lords, trades unions, business and civil society organisations.
H) And, of course, EMUK will also need to further expand it's social media and YouTube operations for each new campaign - again with well thought out pre-prepared visual and other material for each separate campaign.
It's only by deploying all these campaigning methods simultaneously in a truly multifaceted and multimedia way that EMUK will be able to become more effective. Each element in each campaign is there to reinforce the other elements. Every single campaigning element (A to H) outlined above is therefore crucial.
Campaigning methods and techniques are absolutely central to successful and effective campaigning.
And we, European Movement, are the only organisation in the UK specifically dedicated to persuading the public to support rejoining the European Union.
Indeed our success or failure in persuading the public will ultimately help determine whether the government decides to try to rejoin or not!!
So, to a very great extent, the ball is therefore in our court.
A major change of ethos is therefore required within our movement.
We look forward to EMUK changing - and meeting that challenge, even if it requires HQ to dramatically reassess what they spend their money on and how they campaign.