Last Saturday I held my first ‘Make Britain Breakfast Again’ event in Worthing with 6 constituents who supported Leave and 6 who supported Remain. This was my version of the American movement make ‘America Dinner Again’ set up in the wake of the Trump election victory in an attempt to bring a divided nation together around the meal table for meaningful debate about their respective positions and gain greater understanding and mutual respect.
And I am delighted to say it proved a tremendous success. I am grateful to all the ‘guinea pigs’ who came along with open minds and robust views and from the measure of the emails I have received since, they went away with a better appreciation of why people voted as they did and a few new friends as well. At one stage we were in danger of going on into the afternoon and swerved from talk about ‘taking back control, not recognising the country we lived in, how Britain is actually less nationalistic than many EU countries, fears for the state of the Union, an education system in dire straits, and why Holland does everything so much better!’ In fact, we could have had a series of breakfasts of most of the side issues which emerged.
Thank you to all those people who applied but we couldn’t fit you in this time and we will certainly now run some follow up breakfasts. If anyone else is interested, please do get in touch and it would be particularly good to hold an event dominated by young people.
Talking of young people, it was a pleasure spending an hour on Friday with a class of 8- and 9-year olds at the excellent St Peter’s Catholic School in Shoreham. They had sent me a very impressive and beautifully written collection of letters articulating their concerns about the war in Syria and the fate of the millions of refugees forced to flee their homes. Having been to Syria twice and met many Syrian refugees in camps in Jordan and Greece I was able to give them my perspective, but it was hugely uplifting to hear their passion and empathy.
My second school visit of the day was to the Sir Robert Woodard Academy to hear the also incredibly passionate Holocaust survivor Dorit Oliver-Wolff from Eastbourne. Her story from detention camps in Hungary to the stage and ultimately the UK is quite incredible and had her young audience and the rest of us spellbound. I would urge anyone to read her book ‘From Yellow Star to Pop Star.’
For those of you who have not seen it (so far over 35,000 people have!) I have produced a special video on the Coronavirus outbreak on my website and Facebook page. There is also a separate video about upcoming changes to Southern trains in the light of work to expand Gatwick including plans to double the length of West Coastway trains which are notoriously cramped. I am also pleased to report that the Government has stepped in to make sure that commuters will not be ripped off with increased Gatwick Express equivalent fares as well, following our representations.
