Persistent young Remainers who refuse to accept Brexit are being urged to ring their grandparents and elderly relatives to persuade them to resist Britain’s exit from the EU.
The campaign to encourage thousands of people to urge older relatives to reconsider their support for leaving Europe has been slammed by Leave supporters as a form of bullying the elderly.
The campaign hopes to mobilise Brexit-hating millennials against the seemingly unstoppable process of leaving the EU and reducing the heavy age imbalance which saw older voters drive the 52-48% “Leave” victory in last year’s Brexit referendum.
Organisers believe that encouraging conversations between the generations will at least to build resistance to a hard divorce from the European bloc. The initiative has been inspired by the successful “Ring Your Granny” strategy which was credited with reaching across generations to build support for same sex marriage in Ireland before a referendum on the issue two years ago.
As part of the original “Ring Your Granny” strategy, younger people in Ireland filmed themselves calling their grandparents to ask them to back marriage equality in the run-up to the vote. The bid to apply the same tactics to the Brexit issue has been devised with the involvement of Lord Andrew Adonis, the Labour peer who has vigorously campaigned for a second referendum on whatever deal Britain strikes with the EU. Adonis has refused to apologise for saying that Brexit was as big a mistake by Britain as the ill-fated decision to appease the Nazis in the 1930s.
Supergirl
The campaign will be fronted by Madaleina Kay, a 23-year-old writer and activist from Sheffield who was thrown out of a Brussels press conference earlier this month for wearing a super-girl outfit, even though she had press credentials. Kay says she wears costumes to help gain the attention of millennials as part of her efforts to make them more aware of the “dangers of Brexit”.
She argues that broaching the topic with grandparents and other older relatives is a positive and respectful way of sharing opinions and different perspectives across the generations but she has already been accused by Brexit campaigners of “a form of bullying.”
Peter Cook, an anti-Brexit activist who led the Downing Street musical protest against Brexit this summer, told Felix Magazine that Kay should be applauded rather than derided. “It is ridiculous the amount of bile and criticism Madaleina has received on social media,” he said. Cook insisted that Kay’s only aim was to share information and raise awareness “so that every person understands what they are letting themselves in for with Brexit.”
“The ‘Ring Your Granny’ strategy of course is a gimmick for younger people who want to remain in the EU,” he said. “But it is young people that will be affected most by what the older generation decide. It is their future we should be thinking about most of all, not some distant vision of the way Britain used to be like.”
Kay said that one of the most important messages to get across to older voters was that they need to pause and try to see Brexit from the perspective of young people who hope to work, study and move around within the 28-nation EU. “Older people have benefited from EU membership their entire lifetimes and now they’re taking that away from young people who don’t want Brexit, which seems a bit unfair,” she said.
Research by the Tory donor Lord Michael Ashcroft found that 57% of those aged between 55 and 64 and 60% of those older than 65 voted to leave the EU. In contrast, 73% of those aged 18 to 24 voted to remain.
Plans for the campaign are still at an early stage but organisers have compiled a list of potential donors and a crowd-funding appeal starts next week.
by Bob Graham
The post Fight Brexit by Ringing Your Granny appeared first on Felix Magazine.
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