Founded 1998. Working together on campaigns to defend & improve democracy. #Elections | #Parliament | #Democracy Tweets: @StuartCoster
United Kingdom
Joined July 2012
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Brexit restored one of the biggest freedoms of all; the freedom to hold our lawmakers to account. The power of our votes. The ability, peacefully through the ballot box, to remove those who make our laws and induce change. In essence, democracy.
#Brexit #democracy
The EU Commission is unelected but has the sole power to propose EU laws; its Council of Ministers can over-rule member govts now in almost all policy areas; its parliament isn't underpinned by a demos (half the actual word "democracy"); yet, together, these institutions hold legal supremacy over elected govts. The EU is dangerously undemocratic & the inevitable political effects are worsening.
#EuropeanUnion #democracy
The Democracy Movement retweeted
Not only that, those Labour votes were cast on the basis of a manifesto which was and remains to stay out of the EU
This government is starting to look as gaffe-prone under @andyburnham's leadership as when Keir Starmer was in charge.
Burnham has spent the day going on about how the only way for the UK economy to survive is to get close to the collapsing EU
The he announces a policy of cutting import tariffs, something he can only do because of Brexit
It’s not so much that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing but the left hand not knowing of the existence of the right hand & denying that it even exists in the first place
Has @jreynoldsMP forgotten his party's own election pledges, or does saying one thing to voters and doing the opposite mean nothing to this minister?
Shockingly overt lack of respect for democracy, both 2024 and 2016. 17.4m people voted Leave (vs 9.7m for Labour in 2024 and zero for Andy Burnham as PM) and we've since only been out of the EU for six years.
Yet already, despite the EU's record of failure and plans to nearly double its budget, all the same people who never respected that majority vote are pushing yet again to cast it aside, as if it never happened.
Brexit exposed a disturbing anti-democracy undercurrent in Westminster and Whitehall, coupled to a bizarre EU fixation irrespective of its failures, which is evidently still there.
How can we clean up our politics, so that it respects democracy and, odd to contemplate, those in office actually want to govern?
Growing disquiet amongst Labour MPs at Andy Burnham's anti-Brexit moves.
🚨 Labour MP: EU freedom of movement debate risks undermining voter trust
Melanie Onn, the MP for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes, argues:
- “Just as the wounds of Brexit begin to heal, there is a risk of pulling out the staples prematurely.”
- “Freedom of movement was one of the defining issues” of the Brexit referendum
- “Reopening freedom of movement risks reigniting divisions when the country desperately needs a more constructive conversation”
- “The perception that promises made at elections can subsequently be revisited by a political establishment removed from the realities of working communities has left lasting scars.”
@Politics_co_uk
politics.co.uk/2026/10/melan…
The Democracy Movement retweeted
There is a fundamental problem with another referendum on EU membership.
Those who want another one, didn't accept the result of the last one. So why should leave voters not only let them have something that they didn't honour last time, let alone honour any outcome this time?
The Democracy Movement retweeted
No they won’t. They’ll put it in their manifesto and when they win, they’ll say we voted for it.
One to watch out for in this week's Budget - more money for the British Business Bank? Latest example of @andyburnham pushing rejoin on the one hand, while on the other his government's policies are only possible due to Brexit.
#Budget2026 #Brexit @peston @SamCoatesSky @afneil @SophyRidgeSky @faisalislam
The British Business Bank (BBB) is expected to receive another £5bn in the Budget, but would this be compatible with EU rules on state aid? 🤔
The BBB had to be cleared with the EU when it was set up in 2014, which limited its funding and activities 👇
But thanks to Brexit, the UK can now increase funding for the BBB without EU approval...
#brexitfreedoms #brexitbenefits
british-business-bank.co.uk/…
The Democracy Movement retweeted
The UK joining the EU might benefit just over 10% of firms (the ones that export to the EU), but it would harm nearly 90% of firms (the ones that don't export to the EU). We already have a comprehensive free trade agreement with the EU. Let's leave things where they are.
🙏
We need to rally behind organizations that are working hard to defend our place outside the EU.
I'm going to post links every day for a few weeks, to those who deserve your support and will no doubt be making great content.
Today's heroes: @GlobalBritain @DemocracyMovemt
The Democracy Movement retweeted
NEW
There is some confusion over Andy Burnham's position on Brexit
Earlier this morning:
Reporter asks: "Will you allow the UK to join the EU freedom of movement without a referendum?"
Andy Burnham says: "No. And I wasn't saying that", adding that he would "never move ahead of the British public when it comes to Brexit".
11.30am Lobby briefing:
Number 10 will now not say whether the British public will get a referendum on rejoining EU freedom of movement.
A spokesman says: "The process will be set out in due course ... He wants to have an open debate about this.... there are no options on the table."
What do you think? More now on @GBNEWS.
UK exports to the EU: Up, Up or Up. Whichever way you want to measure it. #BrexitReality 🚀
Actual stats, not imaginary 'counterfactuals'. Don't let the EU obsessives gaslight you.
Reality on UK exports to the EU, after @AngelaRayner's inaccurate claims to @bbclaurak yesterday. It would certainly help an informed debate if journalists are prepared to challenge dodgy stats. Hopefully Angela Rayner herself will be having words with whoever supplied her with these misleading figures.
FYI, talking about Brexit yesterday, Angela Rayner claimed that...
“The evidence is really clear in terms of 20% down in exports to the EU, 16,000 businesses no longer exporting to the EU, it has been the red tape on the EU deal we got, has been damaging to the economy”.
But if this is indeed the evidence, it really is not clear!
Let's unpick it... 🧵
The Democracy Movement retweeted
2024 voters backed Labour on the basis of staying out of the EU, incl red wall voters returning. Hoping to win in 2029 by entirely reversing that policy, rather than on competence & domestic delivery, would be an extraordinary gamble. Esp as poll support for rejoin is so shallow.
The Democracy Movement retweeted
…
And remember remainers told us that UK financial services would be decimated by Brexit.
In fact, financial services exports to the EU have increased significantly, most likely helped by regulatory divergence possible only because of …
... Brexit!
The Democracy Movement retweeted
Andy Burnham has told the Sunday Times that he is open to readopting free movement as part of a closer relationship with the EU. This would be an utter affront to all those - including the millions of working-class voters in Labour's traditional heartlands - who voted for Brexit. At a time when our immigration system remains completely broken, it would also be a calamitous own goal. Under no circumstances should the Labour party go along with it.
The Democracy Movement retweeted
The Prime Minister speaks of an honest conversation, and yet the arguments to reverse brexit all sound like we'd be returning to the Europe of 2016. That just isn't true. The Europe we'd rejoin today wouldn't be one where centrists like Angela Merkel were in positions of leadership. Today, the AfD is surging and could take control in Germany, Marine Le Pen in France, Italy is governed by the populist right, hard-right parties are in power or gaining ground across much of Europe. This is a profoundly different political landscape to the one we left, and it is the heights of dishonesty not to hold this fact at the forefront of any conversation we have now.
We're seeing this conversation presented around returning to our young people all that brexit robbed them of. Again, we're having this conversation as though we're still looking upon the Europe of 2016. The Europe of 2026 is aflame, the young people are revolting against perceived economic injustices. An honest conversation would acknowledge this fact.
At a time when British politics is the most fractured it's ever been, reopening this debate, especially in the selective, rose-tinted manner in which it is being discussed, risks driving even deeper divisions through our society.
Is this really the government's priority?
Our young people need growth, opportunity, and a future they can believe in. They need a government focused on delivering these things, not one hellbent on reigniting one of the most divisive debates in modern British politics.
I am by no means opposed to closer ties with Europe, nor the economic benefits they might bring. But an honest conversation about Europe must begin with the Europe that exists today, the Europe we see on our screens, being set ablaze by its youth, not the one we remember from 2016.
How the EU robs its member states and their citizens of democracy. 👇
#Brexit #democracy
An unelected executive is inherently a democratic problem. One with exclusive right to propose all laws especially so. That the EU Commission has these features is simply a fact; not sure anyone objective and rational would disagree.
This is likely why, as here, debate always quickly turns to other institutions, who can only approve laws first handed down by the unelected Commission. But they are also flawed.
In the Council, ministers unelected in most member countries can over-rule the elected one in another. Democracy? MEPs are elected on national platforms, yet make EU-wide decisions together. They are arguably not representing a demos, half the actual word democracy. Which leaves their election a veneer.
The Commission president is only approved by MEPs. Only one name on the ballot is not an 'election'. She is not elected by anyone.
Glossing over these key points of detail is just dangerous for Europe. Democracy actually matters, for stability and much else. It should not be undermined lightly to service utopian concepts. It's arguably no coincidence that radical political forces are rising, when enough upset voters realise they have no control.
Leave voters certainly had this control and democracy in mind, with much justification. Makes no sense to ignore that, other than to intentionally swerve the EU's major democratic flaws.
"'We have 1million people not in employment, education or training. The government says it is serious about getting them back into work. To suddenly say you are prepared to negotiate allowing people from all over Europe to come and take those jobs would be a hammer blow"
#Brexit
Sir Jeremy Hunt - a former Tory chancellor who campaigned for Remain - says returning to free movement would be a 'hammer-blow' to trying to get people off welfare and into work
He says that there is a risk that it paralyses the government because the issue is so divisive, and that there is an unwritten rule that major constitutional issues should only be returned to once a generation
He tells @bbclaurak: 'We have 1million people not in employment, education or training. The government says it is serious about getting them back into work. To suddenly say you are prepared to negotiate allowing people from all over Europe to come and take those jobs would be a hammer blow to those plans to get people off welfare and into work.
'Whatever your views are on the European issue - and I voted Remain - going back to that old model where employers were giving jobs to people from all over Europe and we were parking people on welfare here must be a step back.
'When you have to have these big, constitutional debates you have to have an unwritten agreement that you are only going to come back to them once in a generation. Otherwise it is so divisive.
'I was at the top of a government that was paralysed for several years while we were trying to wrestle with the implications of that vote. I think that having made a decision we should stick with it.'