A lot of party members tell me they feel a need for more factual information to help us win the EU Ref debate.
Within the party we have brilliant writers of leaflets and local press releases who, if supplied the information, can turn it into effective communication.
An excellent new resource has been launched that will help with this. Infacts.org is a well presented website that contains briefings on key factual questions relevant to the referendum and rebuttals to the misrepresentations of the Quitters. It is set up and run by a group of journalists, listed on the website and many of their names you will recognise from the quality press.
If I have one constructive criticism it is that the bulk of their briefings are responses to claims of the other side. We need to set the agenda and debate on our terms, not their terms, to win.
Nonetheless, it is a very helpful site. Some of the briefings include:
The UK net contribution is £6.3bn
The EU hasn’t prevented deportation of terrorists
* Antony Hook was #2 on the South East European list in 2014, is the English Party's representative on the Federal Executive and produces this sites EU Referendum Roundup.
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Would some LibDem “remain experts”, please have a go at rebutting each point in this post from UKIP: “www.ukip.org/busting_the_eu_myths”? Thank you.
Interpol includes members with whom we do not share information. just look at the list of members, hence the need for Europol.
We are not an island nation. We have an open border with the Irish Republic.
Telling us it’s a net contribution of ONLY £ 6.3 billion is not a particularly plus selling point. Now much as I’m going to vote to stay in you’re going to have to do a bit better than that.
That the amount Osborne was trumpeting he was putting in to the NHS.
Wars between France and Germany in 1870, 1914, 1939, seemed likely to continue indefinitely. Neutrals such as Belgium got hurt in 1914 and again in 1940.
President de Gaulle pulled France out of the military side of NATO. Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe moved from France to Belgium and remains there.
Finland, Sweden, Austria, Republic of Ireland are in the EU but not in NATO. Greece and Turkey are both in NATO but came close to war over border disputes and Cyprus.
The Republic of Cyprus could veto an application for EU membership by Turkey. France would have a referendum as promised by former President Chirac. Several EU member states were under the former Ottoman Empire.
It is a condition of membership of the EU that countries sign up in full to the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the status of refugees, including the important 1967 Protocol.
Turkey is one of several countries who have signed the 1951 Convention without the 1967 Protocol.
Therefore an asylum seeker arriving in one of those countries needs to base an asylum claim on “events happening in Europe before 1951”.
Asylum seekers arriving in the UK freely admit to having transitted Turkey and/or to having spent time there, knowing that having done so is not a basis for refusal of the asylum claim.
The Syria conference in London raised large sums of money for countries such as Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. Donors include Kuwait. F&CO will chase up pledges.
Compliance with international conventions is another matter. There has been widespread and frequent reporting of what Australia is doing to push applications off-shore, which has had the effect of diverting the flow of people coming out of Afghanistan elsewhere. Euro-sceptics such as Daniel Hannon MEP have openly suggested that the UK should copy the Australian policy. He has reportedly been approached by UKIP and refused to join them. He was elected as a Tory.
A beggar thy neighbour policy would undermine the whole point of a convention which has been signed by a large number of countries.
The UN convention on statelessness has fewer signatory countries than the 1951 refugee convention, which led to countries such as the UK effectively withdrawing, under a Labour government, using secondary legislation to amend the Immigration Rules. An effect is that such persons, arriving in the UK are likely to claim asylum instead.
Croatia is the 28th member, Serbia is an applicant. They have been at war in the recent past. It must not happen in the future.