Undo ‘devastating’ Brexit says North Herefordshire MP

Britain needs to reverse the “self-inflicted wound” of Brexit, according to Herefordshire’s Green MP.

Five years on from the fateful referendum result, Ellie Chowns MP says the impact on British businesses has been “devastating”, while food prices have “skyrocketed”.

Writing in monthly newspaper and website Byline Times, which describes itself as not politically partisan, she says despite promise of greater freedom from the move, businesses and “collapsing under the weight of bureaucracy”, while young people have been “robbed of the freedom to live, work, and study across Europe”.

“The UK’s absence from key decision-making tables has left us reacting to events, not shaping them,” she writes.

“This is a self-inflicted wound: one we cannot afford to let bleed any longer.”

As a first step, rejoining the EU’s Customs Union “would ease the worst of the trade chaos, protecting businesses and jobs”, she claims.

But she stated at the party’s last conference in September that membership of the EU’s Single Market alone “would not be an ideal long-term solution because the UK would not be a full partner in decision making processes”.

Ahead of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s talks with EU officials in Brussels this week, home secretary Yvette Cooper said at the weekend that the UK staying outside a customs union or single market was “still a red line”.

But Dr Chowns, who briefly served as a Member of the European Parliament before the UK’s withdrawal, now argues that fully rejoining the EU “is not just an economic imperative—it’s a moral one”.

But this will require a “stable public majority” in favour – which “can only be built if those of us who believe in a future in Europe are vocal and proud about our vision for that future,” she says.