Article from EMStaffs.UK

Publication date: 2019-02-07

Title: PRESS RELEASE - Campaigners taking to streets of Stoke-on-Trent North to demand a People’s Vote 

Subtitle: Campaigners for a People’s Vote will be out in force in the City Centre and the residential suburbs of Stoke-on-Trent North on Saturday 9th February. 

Author: Mike Ottewell, Chair of Staffs 4 Europe (North)



Campaigners for a People’s Vote will be out in force in the City Centre and the residential suburbs of Stoke-on-Trent North on Saturday 9th February.

Within selected wards of Stoke North, volunteers will be going door-to-door, delivering up to 10,000 leaflets, urging their local MP Ruth Smeeth to oppose the government’s plans for Brexit and give people the final say in a referendum.

They will be meeting up at the intersection of Chell Heath Road and Cornhill Road, ST6 6QE at 11.00am for a photo, before going door-to-door.

Additionally, a street canvassing stall will be set up outside the Potteries Shopping Centre, Hanley, where residents will be invited to consider and vote on their preference for the various Brexit options now before the MPs for Newcastle and the three Stoke constituencies.

Last month, Theresa May’s plan for Brexit was heavily defeated in Parliament. It is due to be discussed by MPs again later this month, when they will also debate alternatives.

Opinion Polls show 55 per cent of people in Stoke-on-Trent North want a People’s Vote on the Brexit deal.

The government’s proposed deal will make places like Stoke-on-Trent North poorer. It fails to deliver on the promises made during the referendum and is worse than the deal the UK has already, as a member of the European Union. Even the government itself has now admitted that any form of Brexit will severely harm our economy.

In an interview on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme (Wednesday) the chief executive of the British Ceramic Confederation, Dr Laura Cohen stated that proposal being put forward by Government Ministers to cut import tariffs would be disastrous. In effect “we would be giving a leg-up to our foreign competitors.”

Opinion Polls also show that a clear majority of voters in most constituencies across the UK now back calls for a People’s Vote, as the reality of what Brexit means becomes clear.


	    Household bills already going up due to lower value of pound.
	    Businesses are cutting production or moving abroad.
	    Jobs are being lost.
	    NHS facing a recruitment crisis as lots of EU doctors and nurses have left.
	    The Potteries is a manufacturing region in which about a third of local GDP is exposed to Brexit trade-related risks.


The same problems would apply to any form of Brexit; with a loss of sovereignty and control. The UK would become a rule-taker and not a rule-maker, continuing to follow EU rules, but with no say over how they’re made.  

Mike Ottewell, Chair of Staffs 4 Europe (North), said:


“Whichever way you voted in Stoke-on-Trent North in 2016, nobody voted for a deal that potentially makes us poorer and definitely leaves us with less control.

It’s now clear that what was promised in the referendum two and a half years ago, simply can’t be delivered.

Brexit will mean negotiations go on forever, as successive governments try to make sense of something which makes no-sense at all.

And whatever form Brexit takes, it will leave us in a much worse position than the deal we already have as part of the European Union.

That’s why the final decision must now be handed back to the people of Stoke-on-Trent North and the whole of the UK, because only the British people can sort out this mess.”


/ends

 

Notes to Editors

For all bids and media enquiries, contact:

Mike Ottewell, Chair of Staffs 4 Europe (North) 07989 602480
 

Event details: 11:00am, Knave of Clubs Pub carpark, the intersection of Chell Heath Road and Cornhill Road, Stoke-on-Trent, ST6 6QE