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Standing room only at pro-Remain Change UK’s rally
Heidi Allen and Dr Emma Taylor at the Change UK rally in Norwich. Photo: Geraldine Scott - Credit: Geraldine Scott
A rally for pro-Remain party Change UK was full with standing room only on Saturday.
Anna Soubry at the Change UK rally in Norwich. Photo: Geraldine Scott - Credit: Geraldine Scott
The audience cheered as MPs Anna Soubry and Heidi Allen entered the room at the King's Centre on King Street, Norwich, joined by the party's east of England candidates for the European elections due to be held later this month.
Dr Emma Taylor, Change UK's lead candidate and a leading engineer, described herself as 'passionately remain'.
She said after seeing the impact leaving the EU would have on the country 'as a scientist I have to act on the evidence in front of me'.
Scott Luckie, 47, had travelled from north Essex to attend the rally. Mr Luckie said: 'I've been a Labour voter all my life but since Jeremy Corbyn has been leader I've not voted. If [Change UK] is serious about changing politics, I'm all for it.'
Lily Whear at the Change UK rally in Norwich. Photo: Geraldine Scott - Credit: Geraldine Scott
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But he was keen to see what, besides campaigning for a people's vote and to stay in the EU, the party would offer.
Interim leader of Change UK Heidi Allen said the party did have other policies, but the focus right now was on the EU elections.
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Christina Horne, from Heartsease, had also come also to the rally. The 62-year-old said: 'The two main parties, all they do is squabble all the time, if they can't sort themselves out how can they sort the country out?'
While 18-year-old Lily Whear, from Wymondham, said she had felt politically homeless before finding Change UK. Her family had been heavily involved with Labour, with her grandparents holding the Labour garden party at their house in Yorkshire and her great grandfather helped set up the Labour movement in the north of England.
Scott Luckie, a member of the audience, at the Change UK rally in Norwich. Photo: Geraldine Scott - Credit: Geraldine Scott
She said: 'So it's been really difficult recently with the anti-Semitism, my family is Jewish, and I don't feel like I can vote for them, my family doesn't feel like they can vote for them, which is a shame.'
Dr Taylor said she was confident Change UK could succeed in the east, despite the high proportion of leave constituencies. She said: 'In 2016, you saw the campaign, you saw the emotive language and we've heard since about all of the incomplete truths that have been put out there and I sit there from a positive politics point of view and I hate to see it when people are manipulated, and stirred up and made angry, it worries me.'
The Change UK rally in Norwich. Photo: Geraldine Scott - Credit: Geraldine Scott