Now we must unite for best Brexit deal

AFTeR the shock general election result and the furious rancour and recrimination which followed, a process begins today which will truly shape this country’s destiny for generations.

If handled well, the Brexit negotiations will make us a profoundly freer and more prosperous country, maintaining a warm and constructive friendship with our european neighbours but able to look outwards and strike new trading partnerships with the wider world.

handled badly, we could see the worst of all possible outcomes – with Britain nominally outside the eU but still bound by all its stultifying bureaucracy, in thrall to its courts and having to pay billions of pounds a year for the privilege of access to the single market.

Until recent days, Brexit Secretary David Davis had anticipated entering those talks with his negotiating hand hugely strengthened by a healthy Tory majority. Instead, the election result has emboldened those both at home and in Brussels who still hope to sabotage the democratic mandate of last year’s referendum.

Shamefully, these include embittered Tory ex-ministers who arrogantly project their own view of why people voted to leave. The voters were duped, they claim – and hadn’t realised that Brexit would mean leaving the single market and customs union. They say there should be no ‘hard’ Brexit. What they mean, of course, is that there should be no real Brexit at all.

But let us not forget that a clear majority (17.4million people) voted to leave the eU. They voted to regain sovereignty – to take back control of our laws, immigration policy and trading agreements.

And as Chancellor Philip hammond – formerly among the most committed Tory Remainers – acknowledged yesterday, this can be achieved only by leaving the single market and customs union, as well as ending the free movement of people across our national borders.

The truth is that the Remainers have lost the argument and it’s time they realised it. If they had any sense of patriotic duty, they would stop sulking and get behind our negotiators in their mission to forge the best deal for Britain.

As we report today, Mr Davis is remarkably upbeat about our prospects and believes his eU counterparts are equally keen to get the talks moving. What he does not need – and Britain does not need – is to be hampered at every turn by a truculent and undemocratic enemy at home.