It’s within our power to retain sovereignty

WE OFTEN see the word or reference to “sovereignty” but seldom an explanation as to what it truly is. Let me chance my arm. It is the absolute right of a people within the ambit of a nation-state to govern themselves in all things without any foreign institution or power being able to overrule or countermand the people’s government. Within our gaze and within our grasp there are three such sovereignties.

There is the right of our vote as the final arbiter or judge of whom we wish to be governed by. The party elected may not be everyone’s choice but it will at least be a truly British choice. Sovereignty is lost if a foreign body can change our choices in law or practice. That, I believe, was why a majority of voters, most quite strange to erudite arguments, voted to leave the EU. It was not the principle of collaboration that we rejected but the terms of membership. It had become plain to a majority of us that institutions in Brussels could alter our laws behind closed doors and there was nothing we could do about it.

The second sovereignty is that of our defence forces; their strength, deployment and use. A nation that, alone, can control and direct its army, navy, air force, special forces and intelligence networks is sovereign. Give that away, permit other committees to direct where, when and how they will be used, and you have lost sovereignty.

Today the last tenacious fanatics for EU control over us clamour for us to join the European Defence Union. Again, the excuse is “cooperation”. So claim the Remoaners. In fact the EDU hopes to control and direct all the defence structures of Europe from a central command which France lusts to dominate. So far we have resisted and declined.

We will collaborate in a common cause, but the final decision is ours. That is sovereignty.

The third is the one where successive governments over 20 years have let us down. It is the control of all the energy we need to run our country and all the sources of generation of that energy.

Stupidly, successive governments have ignored scientific advances that would enable us to generate every therm that we need, thinking it cheaper to import from abroad. Cheaper? Have a look at your latest bills. They are plunging us into recession.There was never any need for this.

We have coal under our feet, oil and gas off Scotland. Our scientists have devised procedures to reduce the toxic by-products to tiny proportions of what they are now. We have shale oil and gas under our country to power us for decades yet to come. And no proven evidence of earthquakes.

Other scientists have developed cheap, fast, safe nuclear reactors small enough to look like a warehouse but powerful enough to energise a county. All have been sidelined – until now when panic has set in. Our premier goes to Saudi Arabia to ask for more oil and is rebuffed. If we buy from Russia we fund genocide.

We have to institute a truly crash programme to internalise all our needed energy and its generation. Then and only then will we recover the sovereignty for which so many of our ancestors fought and died.