 Hello, hello and welcome to another coordinating call of the M25 the movement for Europe featuring progressive ideas you won't hear anywhere else today. We are continuing our series of sessions where we discussed just one country. We've discussed Germany we've discussed Italy and today we're talking about the UK will start with Rosemary our colleague on the coordinating collective from the CC to discuss the UK and to introduce the topic. And then we'll hand over to our grassroots members in the UK who are joining us for a series of interventions before we open the floor you out there watching this since it's live. If you have any comments concerns questions rants anything you want to throw at us, please do so in the YouTube chat, and we may be reading them out between the interventions. Guys we're going to ask everyone to keep your, your speeches or interventions short between two and three minutes so everyone gets the chance to speak. And now I'm going to hand over to Rosemary the floor is yours. Thank you very much. And thank you to the CC for this opportunity for us to have a UK debate. Like every other country in the pandemic it's been very hard for members of GM 25 to keep in touch with each other and really know what each other were thinking. And I'm not going to talk for long because I want to hear what our members have to say. Just to say that the media at the moment in the UK is a wash with Dominic Coings criticisms of his former great friend Boris Johnson, and particularly the health minister Matt Hancock. And everyone's wondering whether this will have any impact at all on people's assessment of the experience that we're having with the current government or not. Most of the specialists say it won't have any. And the rest of us I think I'm not so sure, because the pandemic and Brexit have been now quite deep and profound threatening experiences for our economy, which of course the government's saying all about protecting and also for for the people. And what we're facing post COVID, and we're not facing that very quickly, because at the moment infections are on the rise. What we're facing is a huge economic crisis in the UK. And I'm hoping very much that there'll be lots of questions that we want to put the British people that is to to our representatives, and including the opposition party in the House of Commons. So I would just mention those two themes. But now I'd like to throw it open to my fellow members. Since Janice has just joined us Janice, would you like to get a word in before we open the floor to our colleagues in the UK or shall we pass okay we'll speak afterwards to you Janice and let's then hand over to Paul Crofts please. Good evening, everybody. And just to say that I'm, I'm delighted to be attending another DM meeting I've attended regularly up until relatively recently, but then it seems to all got very confusing I very much welcome this opportunity and thanks very much for the invitation to say a few words I hope that when I'm about to say we'll we'll we'll pump discussion and debate and that's the purpose of this evening. UK politics as a crucial point in in our history. The first thing I want to say is that I believe that the current Tory project appears to be pretty successful. Despite its ups and downs it's the Tories are now getting 49% of in opinion polls they've recently won the by election. I can't see any real denting taking place in the Tories hegemony on the political scene in the UK despite its ups and downs and I suspect the Cummins effect will have little on that currently right wing populist Keynesianism seems to be the order of today. Brexit still hangs around like a millstone as cultural wars taking place and increasing authoritarianism, they're benefiting from a vaccine bounce and white old working class x industrial areas are increasingly supporting the Tories. Out of desperation or a more long term, was it a more long term political problem for the left. The Labour Party seems to be extremely weak currently and is declining in popularity it's divided it suffer from identity and existential problems. Does this reflect the historic decline of social democracy which is taking place across Europe. I'm certainly increasingly of that view. And I believe that the failure of the Corbyn project are set in a period of great demoralization amongst the left and was this the last stand of the left, going back 50 100 years. The left has constantly believed it can move towards socialism or progressive politics via the Labour Party has the Corbyn, the failure of the Corbyn project killed that are finally because certainly the ups and downs of the left in the Labour Party seems to to be a continuing problem. But the left more widely is still around but it's splintered is incoherent it's divided. It's riddled with sectarianism. And there seems to be few signs of unity. It's strategically paralyzed. There was some signs of new alliances and I'll mention this in a second, but around the Greens and the Liberal Democrats, but the wider progressive socialist left seems to be really in serious problems. And it seems to be still highly dependent upon thinking that the Labour Party is going to be the main mechanism for significant social transformation, which I mentioned earlier I think a tad mythical at this point in time. But the green surge seems to be something to look for positively about locally in Northamptonshire where I am the Greens have recently worked for the first time, won three seats in the new unitary authority in Northamptonshire representing Kettering. And it goes through an alliance with the Liberal Democrats. Is this the way forward do we need to have more thought given to progressive electoral alliances, given the first pass the post is a significant barrier to progressive change. I just want to mention one consequence of Brexit is the growing crisis around independence for Scotland. That crisis is creating for the United Kingdom. And I'm not sure where this is going. It clearly poses some major challenges to English to those of us who live in England. What is the what is the future for England and his politics in England. Does it need to move towards progressive nationalism in an English context, putting aside Wales Scotland and Northern Ireland. There's a real problem for England, I believe. There's some good news and I'm going to finish on this. There is some good news and opportunities. Recent weeks we've seen the upsurge in support for Palestine and the Palestinians struggle. That has brought lots and many, many young people and new alliances onto the streets in the UK. Black Lives Matters has raised issues around racism and support for refugees and that's increasingly been supporting the Palestinian cause. Extinction Rebellion is still active and COP26 in November will provide opportunities for XR and for the struggle for a new deal around the environment and the Green New Deal. New opportunities will be presented over the next few months to propose those things and advance them. The Me Too movement, the fight for women's rights, the struggle has also been heightened in recent months. But there's still problems of a disconnect between all these different struggles. But certainly I've been more optimistic seeing the number of young people that are getting involved in these extra parliamentary struggles. And I hope that that will result in a more long term shift for younger people to be involved in progressive change in the United Kingdom. So with that I conclude. I hope that that was in time. Was that in time? Perfect. Thank you, Paul. We do have a long list of speakers. So if you guys can all keep it within three minutes, that would be fantastic. I had five, sorry. It was fine. The first one we can go a bit over but now let's try and give to three so everyone gets a chance to speak. Next is Andrea. Hello and thank you for giving me a chance to speak. I want to address the very acute present situation where the conservative government is faced with a crisis of accountability of enormous proportions. But whilst everyone is fixed to what happened at the start of 2020, the disastrous response to the pandemic had its origins some years previously. The exercise sickness was a 2016 government simulation of a flu outbreak to war game the UK pandemic readiness. It involved 950 offices from central and local government, NHS organizations and local emergency response planners. The report that was carried out after the exercise found a complete non preparedness at all levels. Many recommendations were made. However, neither the report nor the recommendations were ever published. A freedom of information request was made to the Department of Health, but not granted on grounds that the report needed to be kept secret so as to inform policy development. What actually happened was that the report and its recommendations were completely ignored. Just as Trump had dismantled the National Security Council directorate in 2018, which was charged with preparing for another pandemic. In early 2020 when the pandemic hit Europe and the UK, the country was totally unprepared. Why? The conservative government of Theresa May had dealt with Brexit since 2016 to the exclusion of all other matters. The NHS was run down and austerity policies ruled every aspect of society. Then in December 2019, the chief architects of Brexit, Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson, wrote to electoral victory only to be faced with the COVID pandemic in January of 2020. The hubris of their victory turned to disaster management of the most chaotic kind. Again, the government failing with Trump's assertions that we were only dealing with the flu. What followed were two years of the worst mistakes. Johnson's recently dismissed advisor Dominic Cummings chronicled everything in a chilling account yesterday to the Commons Committee on the handling of the coronavirus. But Cummings attempts to exonerate himself were firmly rejected by the relatives of people who had died from COVID. Despite the government's repeating month after month ad nauseam that they were only following the science, they have been found to be hostile to science. At the same time as they were completely ruthless in their reliance on the NHS while handing one service after another to private companies for profit and only paying a miserly 1% pay rise to health workers. So were it not for a completely lame Labour opposition, this government would not be able to sustain itself because what has been evident to the public at large where their failings from the very beginning of the pandemic. And this is all being brought up to the fore. I think this is where we can play a big role in demanding the accountant accountability of the government and also demanding that the opposition, you know, stand up to the government and, you know, declare that they need to have account be accountable to the population. Okay, that's for now. Thank you. Thank you, Andrea. We had Booba and Eileen next but I don't see either of them on the call. So perhaps we can hand it to George, who's here, George Hill. Thank you for the opportunity to express my views about the development of the M25 work. I just have to say that I'm actually not from the UK. I from Ireland and I live in the northwest of Ireland currently flow very close to what's commonly known as the border but since I've been really active with the M25. I actually call it the undemocratic partition line. So the question could be asked as well, what am I doing on a UK call? Well, I suppose the answer for me to that is that there's always been a connection between, you know, progressive peoples in these four nations within these two islands. And particularly so in the economic front in terms of your workers' rights and workers' conditions. And I myself am in and I've always been in the trade union that's been active and organizationally operative within and across the four countries of the two islands. So with the M25, I'm just hoping that we can actually raise that to the political level that we can have more unity between us, you know, fighting for our progress and fighting for democracy and workers' rights through the M as people in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. And one of the things that I would like to see is a DM-25 Foreign Nations forum. And when I say a four nations forum, I mean, you know, not the four nations forum of Theresa May or not the four nations of Theresa May and the Tory party, but the four nations which will cover all the countries, but including all of Ireland, the whole 22 counties of Ireland, that would be my wish. And this idea kind of started to take hold back in 2017 when in Derry City, which I live close, I went to a meeting on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Derry's famous Guildhall, which Yannis, for a fact, spoke. And what Yannis was doing there, mainly was speaking about his experience in during the Brexit campaign where he was fighting for a remain vote. And one of the experiences he had was in talking to a lot of the English people, they would say things like, you know, we want their country back and Yannis would sort of report, well, you know, what is your country? And so that prompted me to ask a question and the question and answer session. You know, saying is this the time that we should be raising this whole question of the declaration of democracy for England. So Yannis answered favorably on that, yeah, this is something that should need to be traced out and worked out. One of the things that struck me very pointedly was the reaction of the audience was a packed Guildhall. There's people there, mostly from Derry and Dillygall and surrounding areas, but also people from other parts of Ireland, I think even people from other countries within the two islands. And they really gave a resounding, you know, clap-up affirmation for this. And this got me thinking that here we are with this contradiction of Brexit in Ireland. One of the things that it's doing is we're going to have to talk about the future for democracy in Ireland. And that has to involve having a conversation about having a united Ireland. But the reaction of the audience to me was saying, yes, we want that. But we don't want to do it by ignoring democracy in other parts of the two islands, other countries of the two islands, you know, notably Scotland, but particularly England. So this prompted this idea of, you know, a DN-25 foreign nations forum. And it was actually kind of made me or one of the factors that made me actually join DN-25. Thank you, George. Sorry if I can ask you to conclude soon because we've got lots of people coming up. Go on. Okay, just to, anyway, just something for the longer term, but something that's more immediate at the moment or more short term is the GND. And we're getting involved in that. And there's no country like Aisons do some on his team are actually doing great work to revitalize that work. And I've been agreed with Maxine to be a country like Aisons in Ireland. So there's anybody out there in Ireland, they want to contact us. And the other thing that's more immediate is the question of the harsh and unjust treatment of Julian Assange or comrade Julian Assange. And that resonates particularly much with us in Ireland because of our experience over the generations where where people have taken up the cause of progress and democracy. And what's happened is we've come under the brunt end as well of British legal and military apparatus. So we set up a free Assange Ireland to connect with other non-DN-25 people. And what we're doing if I can may is make an announcement that we're having what we're calling a public webinar this Sunday, the 30th of May at 5pm GMT 5pm. And they put the details up on the DM 25 discussion forum with the zoom link, and you'll also find the zoom link on free Assange Ireland Facebook page and I think as well Twitter. And also the UK's don't exercise, don't exercise Assange committee Facebook page. Well, thank you for your time. Thank you, George, and for raising that very important issue of Julian Assange. Next, we have Julia. Hi, good evening. Thanks, Miran. Good evening, everybody. Hi, my name is Julia Moore. I'm part of the UK PNC and currently contact with the People's Gathering. I thought I put my contribution in the context of the People's Gathering, which for me provides the structure for the reason that I was attracted to the 25 membership and that is alliance working. The current political system, which has culminated over the last 10 years in the UK, as far as I see it politically is that the party system is collapsing before our eyes and that's accelerating. People are engaged in politics in different ways other than the traditional membership of party politics. That has become apparent over the last 15, 10 to 15 years. And what the country and maybe Europe and the world desperately needed was a vehicle via which politics is done differently. And this is the phrase that I'm hearing around the UK used in the light of DM 25 profile. And just to give our listeners and our audience an indication here. What we're looking at the moment is Sheffield, which is located in the Middle East Midlands of the UK has recently in the local elections voted to via referendum triggered by a piece of legislation has voted to change the structure of its city council away from the traditional leadership committee system. So how does that vote has only just gone through so the hard work is going to start now. What it looks like in three to four years time, we don't know, but what it indicates to me, and why people's gathering is going to be significant in the UK is that it shows the power of new alliance working, which is something that attracted me to do 25 in the first place as the new form of politics, rather than individuals joining parties, which are no longer fit for purpose, taking pools here. Hope I have peace with the lions working with the greens and with the lived ends absolutely taken that on board. But in terms of the average electoral voter, the way people are engaging with formal politics within our first pass the post system is changing the awareness is changing pools completely right about the age category profile. There's great hope that the young are making alliances and acting politically in a way different from joining static parties. And I think DM 25 UK profile is now the project that has reached its time. And let's hope that we can influence DM 25 policy with the UK bent on that by watching the new mobilization of energy in the UK in the way that people are, I believe doing politics differently. And let's hope that we can indicate that as part of the DM 25 family. Thanks, Miranne. Thank you, Junior. Over to you, Elwin your two to three minutes starts now go. Good. Thank you very much. Thank you for allowing me to talk. And hello to everybody. And the three big disasters which we all facing the biggest is climate change. For us in the UK the next biggest is Brexit. And, of course, this cover idea has been a godsend to the conservatives because it's hidden all the Brexit problems and everybody's concentrating on cover D, which really is just another pandemic, you know, it's handled by the scientists and they make too much of a fuss of it. And the momentum has been too populist isolationism, and you can see this in independence movement for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. And the Northern Ireland situation used to be a Catholic Protestant divide, the Catholics have somehow discredited themselves and that politics has changed but. So it's not so much a religious divide anymore but still as we look at it, it's still untenable and the divides are very, very deep, going back over centuries of history as I'm sure there's an island called the situation in Wales. Subjected by the English for over 800 years had our language suppressed been extracted and exploited for over 800 years colonialism big time. And of course the Scots haven't taken so kindly to English domination so that independent movements are strong. It was unfortunate when Scotland had its independence referendum a couple of years ago. And the EU did say two very unfortunate things that firstly they said that if Scotland wants to rejoin the EU that have to get to the back of the queue. And they said, if Scotland wants to adopt the euro they can't. And both those things are I think, most unfortunate, because the Scottish financial system is very easy for them to switch they print all their money. And it's very easy for them to switch the basis of their money, and they don't need to ask the EU's permission to use the euro. But that's another argument. And I think there are minority groups throughout Europe, the Catalan, the Swami, the Rizondas, the Limburgers. Well, I don't know them all, there's many. And I think the EU is perhaps respecting national structures, a little bit too much, and not respecting the well, the wishes of individual minorities. And I think there is a scope for supporting the minorities across Europe. And somehow we're going to have to face this separation movement and how it's going to play out. Thank you. Thank you, Elwin. I'll hand over now to you, Yanis, who joined a bit late. You've got the floor. Thank you, Michael. Hello everyone. I don't think there's a better example of the necessity of DM 25 than Britain and Ireland. And I'm going to say this because here you have two sets of divisions. One is party political. We have at least three tribes. I'm saying this jokingly, at least three tribes of progressives. And unless they unite somehow, there will be no progressive takeover of the UK. These three tribes, as I see them are, progressives within the Labour Party, our comrades, Rosemary's one, and many others here. Then there are those who used to be in the Labour Party and left and discussed the way that Corbyn was expelled and Kirstam and Blairism came back. And then there are those who were never in the Labour Party, progressives, people who were in the Greens, they were in the SWP, they were nowhere. These divisions cannot be healed without bringing things together and without a movement like DM 25 to bring them together. There's the second set of divisions that I mentioned, the national one. Scotland, for instance. Scotland appears now to be moving towards independence, maybe not, but it is moving, whether it's going to get there or not, we don't know. But what is far more fascinating is England, because I always thought that Brexit is an English phenomenon. It is not a British phenomenon. It's English it really. And it's got to do with a huge divisions within England. The fact that the north of England, the northwest, the northeast have been treated like cattle whose price value, whatever market value has gone to zero. And there is a question of democracy. There's a question of constitution, the devolution process that Blair started was hopelessly incomplete and therefore made things, well, not worse, but it certainly did not resolve anything. So there are these two sets of divisions and you can see that both contain people who should be together. Like for instance, you know, the majority of SNP people are our people. And yet they will never speak to the Labour Party or the Labour Party will never be seen in Scotland to be speaking to them because this is like forfeiting Scotland, Scotland wholesale. The Greens will never speak to the Labour Party. The Welsh are, as we heard, completely on their own. Ireland is the epitome of division. But the M25, we are a tiny little movement. But we have a lot of reach. And one of the reasons is all those people that I mentioned actually trust us. People, I know people the SNP, including Nicola Sturgeon, who actually trusts that the M25 is not against them. Our comrades in the Labour Party, you know, Jeremy Corbyn, Joe McDonald, they trust us implicitly and explicitly because we've always stood by them. We have excellent relationship with the Greens, whom somebody mentioned. We have excellent relationship with progressives who are in no part of it because they are disgusted by them. We have excellent relationship with Plaid Cymru in Wales, with Sinn Fein in Ireland, with, you know, the president of Ireland, the great Michael B Higgins. We have that. More recently we have been bringing it to bear. Rosemary, myself and others have been involved in creating a forum that has not been publicized yet, because it's not being publicized is an essential aspect of it succeeding where we've brought around the table. People from the Labour Party, the Greens and so on, trade unions that would never speak to one another otherwise. And we're doing this again in June. This is the one occasion when we have not been transparent because they asked us not to make it public. And so I'm not going to mention names. But what we need to do is we need to overcome two urges that are both wrong or lead in the wrong direction. One is the urge to come up with some kind of alliance of the top. You know, leadership of the Labour Party, the leadership of the Greens, you know, Len McCluskey from Unite, Nicola Sturgeon. That's never going to work. And the second urge that needs to avoid it is the urge of, you know, just going grass only. What we need to do is we need to bring around the table as we're doing important figures of the leadership of different organizations, different parties, different nationalities from Britain and Ireland. I wouldn't call it the British Isles. My Irish friends wouldn't like that. Why don't I call them the Irish Isles? And, you know, bring them together and help. And this is, you know, this is where Osmo is very strong on. And get them to empower their members at the grassroots level with the OK, the green light from the leaders to do things together. This is what DIMP 25, Britain and Ireland should be about. We have an opportunity to make history, to make a difference. On the 30th of June, we're going to have the next such closed meeting, which will not be publicized again. We hope that next meetings will be publicized once these people are not afraid of publicity regarding they're getting together. But we're working behind the scenes. We are working at the grassroots level. And let's strengthen DIMP 25 UK with some new people coming in the PNC or collaborating the PNC. I'm very excited by this. And last but not least, I'm sorry I've spoken too long, but last but not least, let me say that DIMP Central, the CC, is exceptionally pleased that we have proven that we always meant it. When we say don't give a damn about Brexit. Britain is part of DIMP. It's part of Europe. And who cares about the EU and Brexit. Thank you, Janis. And I would remind everybody here if you want to talk, please just write the word stack in the chat. The floor is now open and you out there. If you've got any reaction to anything that you've heard here or any questions for any of the speakers, please also write your comment or question in the YouTube chat. Buber, floor is yours. Hi everyone. So my name is Buber Carradambele. I've been a member of the DIMP 25 UK since officially became a thing in the UK. I've been involved in the Provincial National Collective ever since. And I'm also a member of the Labour Party as an officer locally. And alongside my sitting job, I'm also involved in several projects where building a community is the most. So what I want to share here is my perspective as a French-European living in the UK. The first thing I'd like to say is the fact that for me, the Corbyn and the project and him being a member of the Labour Party was a missed opportunity. Like I said, I'm French but I would still have preferred having Brexit with Corbyn than being in the EU without him. And the reason why is because like Yannis just said and pointed out that the outcome of Brexit and what happened until now was fairly obvious. Me as an outsider, although I've been living in the UK for a long time, I'm still French. And as an outsider, I could see the dynamics taking place in the UK and division in the UK is deeply rooted. And the EU, what I've noticed as a French national for me, it spoke a bit more is how the EU was always at the wrong end of the blame game. And obviously people were taking it in. So when the chance was given to have a cell body, I wasn't surprised that people, even if it was by a small margin, decided to leave the EU. But like I said, as far as I was concerned, Corbyn would have made a difference in the UK. And that's because his proposition was a proposition that transcends the UK politics and Brexit. It was about changing the country as a whole. And the reason why I'm part of DM as well is because DM's proposition transcends being part of the EU or being part of the UK. It's about making a difference in the UK but also around Europe. And I think, and that's where I'm going to end, is a bit like Yannis just said. For me, the role of DM25 is to offer that new proposition a bit like the corp. Because it's not about the person. And that's what I like about DM as well. It's not so much about the person, but about the proposition. And DM UK, the way it can happen is to offer a different proposition in the form of encouraging more local activism, getting people to be more involved in politics locally and nationally, but by actually being active members. And obviously the Green New Deal and everything that goes with it. And this can happen by bringing all the progressive force around the same table for a common goal. And that's something I think I'm going to be very, very proud of. Thank you, Buber. Pascal. Hi, I'm French, but I'm a resident in the UK. I am also, I wasn't a member of the Labour Party, but one option that Yannis forgot is people were expelled for anti-Semitism, which now I'm trying to reclaim as a badge of honour given the situation. And my main issue and the one I think is maybe the most important at this moment, and which maybe should bring everybody together is the total democratic deficit in the UK. And electoral reform and constitutional reform, I think, is the only thing I want to fight for. Because we, as you mentioned, we have divisions, there's things I would not agree with. I could never vote Lib Dem. There's a lot about the Greens that I do not like. I'm very left-wing. But having been back to France the last few months, I would like to tell you, for instance, there are still gilets jaunes who are meeting 500 metres from our house and around about every Wednesday evening. They've been there for years. When I arrived in France in the autumn, there were demonstrations every week in every major cities against a law that was going to criminalise people, that would take photos of police abuse at demonstrations. Weekend after weekend after weekend of demonstrations, they won. The government pulled the bill. So what is it that makes a country so politically engaged that my local fishmonger can lecture me about Macron who's trying to emulate Blair and his bloody third way that we do not want? Thank you very much. And he understands every fine detail of a political situation. In the Netherlands, people can't even realise that the simple fact of the price of a bus ticket, of a bus line that disappears in the countryside, every little thing are political decisions. Every little aspect of life is politics. Every decision that a government takes will affect your life. Why don't they get it? And the reason they don't get it is because the UK has the most undemocratic electoral system in the world. There are very few countries that have it, but this country still has it. And so, yeah, people are so disengaged that they even stop. They can't even realise that a lady who wears a million pound crown on her head sitting on the gold throne, talking after this ridiculous theatrics of Black Rod and knock, knock, knock and gosmos while you have a 6,000% increase in food banks. You know, this is so absurd that the moment you spend a little bit of time out of the UK, people are just gobsmacked, how much people are putting up with, and the reason they're putting up with, and they don't vote. The UK at the last election in 2019 had the worst turnout in a whole of Europe, and that was probably the most important election of their lifetime. They didn't come and bother. When I tell people in France that Boris Johnson was elected with 43% of the vote, and he has a whopping majority of 80 parliamentarians. They cannot believe me. I have to repeat it three times. And then I tell them, actually, he was voted in with 29% of the registered electorate. This, these figures are staggering. And so Electoral, you know, I don't get Clive Lewis may not be the best candidate for the Labour Party. I don't care. He's committed to electoral and constitutional reform. And right now that is the one issue I would go in the street and let a cocktail Molotov and throw it at anything Westminster, the police, I don't care. This is the one issue to fight for. Because until we resolve that, people are going to remain truly apathetic. They know their vote doesn't matter. It doesn't count. Their voice doesn't matter. That's the thing we have to change. And then it will explode into a thousand parties in a different electoral system. Corbyn would have been leading a coalition government by now since December 19. People from every non Tory parties in this government. That is a mature democracy. That is a normal, modern democracy. That is what I want to see in the UK. So I will join any movement that puts this on their manifesto. Thank you very much. Thank you Pascal. And thank you for your passion in the right place. Manus. Hi. Thank you. I just want to ask a question really when I joined the M25 as somebody who lives in the UK. One of the things I thought about was what are our possibilities as activists in the UK or members of the M25, members of an organisation that places the reform of Europe at the centre of its concerns after Brexit. So I just wanted to ask about that tension between our position within the UK, our position within a country that existed the European Union, but also being within an organisation that places reform of the European Union at the centre of its concerns. One thing that undermines Brexit actually when we thought about the Irishness who talked about this idea of the four nations, Irish people in the UK and also Irish people who have Irish grandmothers and grandfathers kind of beat Brexit in some ways or undermine it because they can remain within the European Union in a sense with their Irish passports but also live within the UK. So I just thought it was an interesting exception. But also something that's kind of unexperiencing and that I think is important. I think perhaps for the end to think about with regards to that relationship between Europe and the UK, it's really what's happening right now to Europeans who are trying to come to the UK or Europeans who are living within the UK. So I've just read today about people being stopped in the airports, being detained, friends and colleagues who work in universities here who are going through difficult times. Some have to stay here for months and end. They want to go home for the summer but they can't because they have to stay for six months and so on. There's new technicalities that mean that they've lost freedoms that they've had. So I was just wondering whether the M25 is thinking about the exceptional experiences of Europeans within the UK right now as Isata and is that something that people are thinking about? And just also just some reflections on this question of nationalism that seems to have come up in some of the discussions. I often think about the difference within the UK between English nationalism and British nationalism. And usually this is framed in terms of a kind of British cosmopolitanism and an English isolationism and small mindedness and so on. And with the breakup of the UK, which is coming down the tracks, I just wonder as an open question, is there a possible English cosmopolitanism? Is there an English identity that can be progressive, that can be Europe facing and so on? That's just an open question in that relates to some of the other comments you've had. Thank you, Manus. Paul? Paul? No, not Paul Croft, sorry. The other Paul. Ah, he's disconnected. Okay, my apologies then. In that case, Michael. Michael Sinclair? No, I'm just done. Hello, everyone. I really like what Pascal was saying. And, you know, I have to say that every time we go to vote, over and above voting for a party, we are in reality endorsing the political institutional design. We're keeping the train on the rail. People think that they might vote in and out of government of their choice to make the difference. But we get the same, the same old, same old, decade after decade after decade, because in effect, we are endorsing a design. And this design benefits the politics and politicians more than it does the people. What more evidence can we have than the growing disenfranchisement between citizens and their government? And the results of these designs are a trump. The results of these designs are a Brexit. I've taken a lot of interest in Citizens Assemblies, our DM-25 group. And I'm following very closely the Bogart-Democratie happening in Germany, where the Bundestag realises the growing gulf between electors and the elected. The series of three Citizens Councils since 2019. The last one held last month. And there is a possibility that these will be rolled out throughout Germany, Citizens Councils. Germany has a very good fibre and root network already with Social Democracy, with Medemocratie. So I should be very interested to see what happens in Germany. And as I've said to my group, if this happens to even a small degree, I think this would have the greatest historical effect on Europe ever. Because the Citizens Council, the Berger Act happening in Germany, involves members of the Bundestag. They are part of it. And this, as far as my knowledge goes, is quite unique as regards Citizens Assemblies. So that's what I have to say. We must remember what we are voting for. We're not voting for parties necessarily. We must endorse a design. And I would argue that part of governments, they must have an agent, a Citizens Assembly, to give them balance. So that's what I have to say. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Michael. And we've been going for an hour now, so we must start wrapping up soon. We have just a few more speakers. I'm going to try and bring you in now Padma Deepapur. Hi, everybody. Good to talk to you. Yes, I mean, it's a very, very rich discussion. I'm glad I joined. I've not been on one of these before in terms of the, in terms of the joint discussion, although I've been a member of DM 25 for a couple of years now. And I'm based in London. A couple of things I'd like to pick up on really the, particularly to do with the UK and its possible breakup. Obviously, speaking as a Democrat. I think with the relationship with Scotland, we have to accept that it's got to be their decision. You know, there's no question about that in my mind. You've got to dictate to people and say you've got to stay in the union blah, blah, blah. You know, it's got to be their decision. And if they want to have a second referendum, then they have got to have a second referendum. It's very simple for me in that sense. But having said that on the actual issue itself. And again, this is a private view of mine. I think it's pots, because, you know, you have a situation in Scotland where you have, they've got 8% of the population, but they generate 5% of the GDP of the UK. So clearly there's a deficit there. And, you know, usually when composite countries break up, if we look at Yugoslavia, it was Slovenia that wanted to break away. If you look at the Czech Republic, sorry, the Czechoslovakia, it was the Czech Republic that wanted to break away. If you look at Spain, it's Catalonia that wanted to break away. Each time it's the rich end of the country that wants to break away. Yeah, in our case with Scotland is the poor end of the country that wants to break away. And that doesn't make any sense at all. So I would be very much opposed to DN25 taking a stand one way or another. I think the best position for DN25 is to just accept that it is an issue in Britain. Support democracy supports the right of the Scottish people to have a second referendum, but not to take a different stand on whether we're actually in favour of independence or not. I firmly believe, I've always believed in federalism. I think that's the way to go. And I'm glad I'm very much in favour of this idea having a complete DN25 that covers all the islands and the whole of Ireland, not just one little bit of it. And I mean, we could call it something like the DM25 of the North Atlantic Islands if, you know, because of the connotations of the word British. So I'd be quite happy with that. So that would be my kind of preferred solution. You know, and I think we ought to pave the way by doing that. If we can take Irish friends who want to come along with that. That's a great idea. Sorry to cut you off. No, that's fine. Okay, Duncan. Right, thank you, everyone. Just quickly then. Obviously, we're our strengths are our transnationalism, you know, besides being progressive. And amongst our other fantastic achievements are the writing of the GND, which is an extraordinary bit of structure, almost sort of a dream view of what we want. And so we are capable of very high level visioning, shall we say. Now, given that we've had Brexit, and given that we've got four more years of Johnson. And it seems to me opposite and given also our interest in the democratic deficit that affects regions and donations like Scotland, for example, but regions as in Catalonia, for example. The deficits that exist across Europe. In respect of nations, regions, peoples, perhaps the German villages, spread across. There is potentially some visioning that we could do and manifest in a document comparable to GND, which focuses on the local, the connections between the regional and what those relations might look like. For us in the UK, given our circumstance and our wish to work in tandem with others transnationally, I think our focus should be on connecting up regions and municipalities across our continent. Thank you. Thank you, Duncan. I would refer you to our People's Gathering project, which does something rather similar to what you were mentioning. We've been going for more than an hour. Rosemary, would you like to wrap up a little bit? No, I don't think you could wrap that up. I think we just have to have more of it. But thanks very much. It's been interesting. Fair enough. Well, sorry to have to close things now, but we've been going for an hour. As I said, thank you very much to you out there for watching. And that's it for this session of our coordinating call. We've got another session coming up in two weeks because the fort might be cool. I would remind you all that tomorrow on YouTube at 6pm CET we have a debate to determine our position on Israel, Palestine. So please do come back for that. Take care.