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We stand on the verge of momentous change
MARK PERRYMAN explains why Brexit can’t be the sum total of a winning Labour campaign

BREXIT’S impasse has become all-pervasive. It isn’t to decry the importance of the issue, however, to point out that just down the road from Labour’s Brighton conference venue in Lewes, where I live, schools being threatened with forced academisation has precious little to do with whether we stay in the EU or not. 

Nor is it to do with the EU that head teachers, wrongly in my view, have been driven to this most desperate of measures because of the chronic lack of resources all primary schools now face. 

Lewes is a small market town of 16,000 persons. Unless Brighton and Hove Albion are at home or it’s our annual bonfire, there is no permanent uniformed police presence, the police station has been closed and turned into a glorified phone box. 

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