I’m speaking at the Rejoin EU march – this is what we’re going to do next

A new YouGov poll has shown that the majority of people are in favour of reversing Brexit, writes Femi Oluwole. Today we begin the fight to rejoin the European Union, and put our country back on the path to economic prosperity

If we can’t afford food, we definitely can’t afford Brexit (EPA)

Today’s National Rejoin March is just about saying that politicians aren’t supposed to deliberately hurt people. That’s it. That’s why I was invited to speak on stage.

You don’t need me to tell you how much the public distrusts our politicians. Brexit may not have created that problem, but it broke the most basic principle of politics: we, the politicians, are working to help you, the people.

Those people I’ll be speaking to on Parliament Square aren’t unreasonable. We represent the majority of the UK who, according to all the polls, believe this Brexit disaster has gone far enough.

In 2018, leaked government documents showed that no matter what version of Brexit we negotiated, it would make people poorer. So, for the last half-decade, every politician who supported Brexit has been knowingly and deliberately hurting a population that was already drowning in poverty.

The debate about whether Brexit is good or bad for the people ended years ago, when the Brexiters started admitting it publicly. Boris Johnson called the new relationship with the EU “unfair” within six months of leaving it. Rishi Sunak said Brexit is “a big part of the reason why” UK exports are lagging behind other similar countries. Trade secretary Kemi Badenoch says Brexit has been “traumatic” for the UK car industry.

Jeremy Hunt said that rejoining the EU single market would be “very beneficial to growth”. Minister George Freeman says “the costs [of Brexit] are obvious.” Nigel Farage says “We haven’t actually benefited from Brexit economically” and that “Brexit has failed”. Jacob Rees-Mogg said the Brexit import checks, which they’ve now delayed until January 2024, would add up to 71 per cent to the cost of food.

So, the politicians behind Brexit know they are hurting us by continuing with it. Meanwhile, nearly half of low-income parents are skipping meals to feed their children, during the sharpest fall in living standards ever recorded, according to the government’s Office for Budget Responsibility.

That’s why the latest YouGov poll shows that the people of the UK would vote to rejoin the EU by a ratio of 62-38. Like I said, we’re not being unreasonable. We’re not some fringe group of extreme Europhiles. The people of the UK have been hearing their government regularly admit that they are actively driving them deeper into poverty. How long did you expect us to sit quietly and take that?

Again, we’re being reasonable. We understand that rejoining the EU completely and politically is a long negotiating process that could take a decade. But rejoining the economic parts – the single market and customs union – can be done in months. That was one of the deals the EU offered us back in 2017, and Michel Barnier – the EU’s former Brexit negotiator – recently said the door is always open.

The Bank of England said Brexit has raised food prices by at least 6 per cent. According to the government’s experts, Brexit trade barriers are costing us 4 per cent of our economy. That’s the equivalent of £100bn just sitting on the table, and the government is refusing to touch it, while families go cold and hungry.

If we can’t afford food, we definitely can’t afford Brexit.

That’s why we’ll be demanding the politicians stop lying to us, by saying they can “make Brexit work”, when they know it can only make us poorer. We’re in the insane position where Nigel Farage can admit that “Brexit has failed”, but Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party, is still claiming it can work.

The sooner we all accept that the UK’s future is in the EU, the sooner we re-establish the principle that our politicians are there to help us, so we can actually tackle the cost of living crisis with both hands. That’s what we deserve. That’s what we demand.