European Union advocates kicked off a new campaign against Brexit today, unveiling a coach emblazoned with dire economic warnings in a strategy echoing the 2016 "Leave" campaign's infamous bus slogan tactic.
The new initiative -- called "Brexit: is it worth it?" -- rolled out its red coach displaying the statement "Brexit to cost 2,000 million pound a week says Government's own report, is it worth it?" It set off from Westminster in central London this morning on an eight-day, 33-stop campaigning swing around Britain.
Ahead of the 2016 referendum Brexit proponents, including now-foreign secretary Boris Johnson, toured the country in a bus clad with the controversial claim: "We send the EU 350 million pound a week, Let's fund our NHS instead."
The figure references Britain's contribution to the EU budget as a gross total and excludes the rebate it famously won in 1984.
Paired with the suggestion that these funds would be redeployed to the state-run National Health Service, it became seen as a highly contentious and divisive ploy.
The new pro-EU campaign, launched as an online crowdfunding appeal in December by a London-based non-partisan grassroots group, is nonetheless eager to counter now with its own sloganeering.
It claims its 2 billion pound figure is based on official economic analysis that the ministers are refusing to release, and on the UK entering into an EU free trade agreement, the preferred option.
That scenario would see a five percent slowdown in GDP after 15 years, according to leaked estimates.
"Some people will think this is a price worth paying... but it is certainly worth asking the question: is it worth it?" wrote campaign supporter Martha Lane Fox, an internet entrepreneur and House of Lords peer, in the The Times newspaper.
Organisers say 20 grassroots groups have scheduled the bus tour, which will visit all corners of Britain from Scotland and Wales to various English regions and cities.
They aim to highlight what they see as the three choices facing Britain -- a hard or soft Brexit, or remaining in the EU -- and their costs and benefits.
"There are reasonable people who support Brexit and reasonable people who oppose it," the campaign said on its website.
"But we have the right to make up our own minds.
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