Who are the Citizens of the World?

We’re a group of people who came together through a shared sense of outrage at the vote for Brexit in the UK in June 2016, and subsequent events.

But you lost, can’t you just get over it and move on?

Well, democracy doesn’t mean that the losing side stops making the argument and goes along with whatever the victors decide. And it immediately became clear that much of the case for Vote Leave was based on either outright lies (£350m a week to the NHS?) or misinformation (Turkey about to join?). We have spoken to a lot of Leave-voters since and it is our opinion that for many of them, expectations of life outside of the EU will be very different from the reality.

So do you think Leave voters are idiots?

No, we absolutely do not. Far more intelligent people than us have argued that membership of the EU is too complicated a question to be left to the masses to decide. It involves an understanding of hugely complex issues such as the workings of international trade and the Single Market, most of which were barely touched on during the referendum campaign. There is also a huge amount of misinformation about the EU in the media and on the Internet, which the Leave campaign exploited to the full. People voted in good faith based on the information that they had available, but genuine facts were in short supply.

Why ‘Citizens of the World’?

Partly a reference to Teresa May’s speech at the Tory Party Conference, it’s also a conviction that we should focus more on what brings us together than what divides us. The human race works best when it works together. We totally reject the nationalism and borderline fascism that has manifested itself since the Brexit vote, and are determined to call it out wherever we see it.

As citizens of the world, we want to put our side of the argument across and reach out to Leave voters to explain why they voted as they did and what they hope it will achieve, and maybe build some bridges in what seems an increasingly divided world.