Leaving the EU is the prerequisite to reforming our system of governance.

Blog Action Day at the being of this month apparently saw bloggers from all over the world post on the usual suspects of the environment, poverty and climate change. The real issue they should be addressing, if they want to see things really change and to have their views listened to, is who should ultimately hold political power because unless there are mechanisms for the will of the ‘people’ to influence and if necessary alter government policy, outside of general elections ,then sadly nothing much is going to change.

The Harrogate Agenda, from its conception in 2012, has promoted the need for genuine ‘People Power’ or ‘Direct Democracy’ the key to which we believe is the recognition by the state that the people are sovereign. We have six demands for better governance, as covered on our website, and we also acknowledged from the start that our demands could never be enacted while we were members of the EU. On page 26 of our pamphlet we say this.

“As it stands, the direct democracy embodied in THA is not compatible with membership of the EU. It confronts one of the core principles of the EU, as specified in Article 10. This states that- ” The functions of the Union shall be founded on representative democracy” and that: “citizens are directly represented at Union level in the European Parliament”. Direct democracy – and the EU cannot exist side-by-side.”

It is because of this very clear belief that the EU and THA are incompatible that we joined with five other groups to form The Leave Alliance to fight the referendum. The Leave Alliance supported Dr North’s ‘Flexcit- The market solution’ which is still the only staged, flexible and continuous exit plan to leave the EU yet devised. However, despite winning our work is not yet done as there is no point leaving the EU to end up in a worst trading position than we currently have and so the need to promote ‘Flexcit’ must go.

The point is that after 43 years of integration into the EU it is totally impractical to believe we can simply leave overnight without the need to negotiate a deal. A further key issue is to differentiate between the 27 members of the EU, the 31 countries in the Single Market or EEA and the 51 countries which make up the continent of Europe. The Leave Alliance believes that while we should leave the undemocratic, corrupt. moribund and unaudited EU we should initially stay in the EEA, as an interim measure, until we can lead the way to help create a genuine free trade area between all the countries of Europe.

The interim solution, of initially remaining in the EEA, is also the only deal that has any chance of being finalised in the two years available once Article 50 has been triggered and there is plenty of evidence that to try and improve on the deal we already have will take much longer with adverse consequences for our existing trade.

Also it should be noted that free of the EU but still part of the Single Market/EEA we would be able to negotiate on Freedom of Movement under Article 112 of the EEA agreement. I would also point out that the issue of migrant workers is very different from the problems we face with refugees and asylum seekers which require quite different solutions involving the cooperation of the international community. Again free of the EU we could lead on these issues in our own right.

So once free of the interference of the political EU and with our own Parliament regaining control of our own affairs The Harrogate Agenda can once again focus on promoting our demands. Realistically nobody should expect that our government or our politicians will simply roll-over and accept our demands without a great deal of resistance as our primary aim is the recognition that ultimate power resides with the people and not with Parliament.

People power requires checks and balances to ensure it is not abused but real democracy requires that a sovereign people have the mechanisms to hold the government of the day to account as and when they want to rather than having to wait until the next general election. This is why it is so important to spread the word and to build up a grass root’s movement to bring pressure to bear on our politicians and other elected officials to point out that without supporting our demands we will not support them.

Finally remember this that until we the people have real power to directly influence government decisions as and when they are made we will always live in fear of a future government taking us back into the EU against our wishes. Parliament must become responsive and ultimately subordinate to the final will of a sovereign people.