Brexit Red Lines

Type: Campaign briefings
Date: 22 September 2016
Campaigns: General

The decision to leave the European Union is the biggest political choice the UK has made in a generation. It has had serious knock-on effects for the UK’s political landscape, and has the potential to fundamentally change the future shape of the country’s politics. Unfortunately, some are looking to use the new situation to further roll back human rights, even threatening some of the key victories achieved by social justice campaigners in the twentieth century. Even the European Convention on Human Rights, which the UK has been part of since 1953, has been called into question.

In this precarious time, it is vital that we put down some clear red lines and say to both the UK government and the European Commission ‘this far but no further’. This is why we have listed our top red lines for Brexit, seven issues on which we demand that the EU and UK negotiators refuse to roll back decades of social progress. They are not meant to be a definitive list of what an ideal Brexit agreement would look like, our ambitions for that go much further. But if we are successful in defending these seven red lines, we will have succeeded in averting the worst of what many activists feared Brexit would lead to.