12 May 2018

The Guardian: One million students join calls for vote on Brexit deal

Student organisations representing almost a million young people studying at UK universities and colleges are joining forces to demand a referendum on any final Brexit deal, amid growing fears that leaving the EU will have a disastrous effect on their future prospects.

Predicting a young people’s revolt over the coming months, student unions – representing 980,000 students at 60 of the country’s leading universities and colleges – are writing to MPs in their areas this weekend, calling on them to back a “people’s vote” before a final Brexit deal can be implemented.

Student leaders said last night that they were planning action that would dwarf protests held in 2010 against the coalition government’s plans for student fees, and that they would not rest until they had been granted a say on their futures.

They argue in the letter to MPs that there are large numbers of young people – estimated at 1.4 million – who were too young to vote in the June 2016 EU referendum but who are now eligible to do so, and that this group deserves a say.

They also insist that promises made by the pro-Brexit groups during the campaign have not been kept and that only now, almost two years on from the narrow Leave vote, are most people beginning to understand what life outside the EU will look like.

“Because of all this, we call on our elected leaders to deliver on a people’s vote on the Brexit deal so that young people can once and for all have a say on their futures,” the letter says.

Among the university unions that have signed up are those representing students at Birmingham, Durham, Cambridge, Swansea, Leeds Beckett, Lancaster, St Andrews, Liverpool John Moore’s and Westminster. The joint letter and signatories were organised by the campaign group For our Future’s Sake (FFS). [...]

Full article on The Guardian

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