As Britain returns state – it’s time for

ring down the ages as genuinely historic: when Britain showed the world that it has regained the indomitable will to live as an independent nation.

After more than 46 years in the European Union, Britain has boldly stepped out on its own, taking a risk, certainly, but then which great historic national action has not involved some element of risk? By stating that no foreign law shall henceforth have jurisdiction over British law, we have thrown away the jurisprudence comfort blanket and become an adult, taking ultimate responsibility for our own choices and actions again.

“Where, by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles,” starts the Act in Restraint of Appeals of 1533, “it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an empire, and so hath been accepted in the world.” By banning appeals to Rome and therefore making Henry VIII the final arbiter of Britain’s laws, the Act was a key document of the Reformation. Even the Act of Supremacy of 1534 which made Henry the supreme head of the Church of England was not so important when it came to defining us as a self-governing country. Crucially, the word “empire” in that context merely meant a self-governing state, and had nothing to do with the British Empire that spread across the globe in the following half-millennium.

What happened at 11pm last night was effectively a return to that status quo ante, the situation that existed for the 440 years between the Act in Restraint of Appeals and Britain joining the European Economic Community in 1973. Those Leftists and Remainers who sneeringly allege that the Leave vote of June 2016 was a nostalgic, doomed attempt to return to the days of 19th century British Empire could not be more wrong.

For it was, in fact, a hopeful, proud attempt to return to the days of the 16th century, Henrician meaning of the word empire, which simply and merely denoted a country that governed itself. We are now going back to the days when no foreign power is able to alter or countermand the laws made here, by our Commons and Lords and signed into law by our monarch.

Brexiteers were not necessarily voting to be richer as a result of being free and

independent. One of the most oftrepeated tropes of the Remainers was that “No one voted to be worse off ”. Yet, in fact, Brexiteers knew perfectly well that there was indeed a good chance of being poorer as a result of their brave leap into the pre1973 constitutional arrangements. Even if only one-tenth of the predictions of Project Fear turn out to have been accurate, it would still have a significant monetary cost to them. Yet they voted for independence anyhow, which is itself a magnificent reminder of the sheer courage (and perhaps bloody mindedness) of the British.

Winston Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill, coined the phrase “Trust the people”, and its truth was reiterated in the European referendum on June 23 2016, when the British proved once again in their long history – as evidenced by “divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles” – that they can be trusted to do the patriotic thing when given the choice. (It was of course outrageous that the Establishment refused to give them that choice for more than four decades between 1975 and 2016).

The dictionary definition of patriotism is to have “zeal for the rights and freedoms of one’s country”, an almost perfect explanation of the motives of those who voted Leave in June 2016, and who looked with increasing astonishment and frustration as almost every single element in the Establishment sought to subvert their will, at least until they were able to make their voices heard at the polls on Dec 12 last year.

Boris Johnson, who sees himself in the same Tory Democracy political tradition as Lord Randolph Churchill, knew that if he trusted the people, all would be well. And it was. So, what can those 440 years as an independent nation teach us about the world to which we finally returned at 11pm last night? John Cabot had already sailed for Newfoundland 36 years before the Act in Restraint of Appeals, and the process that led to British global trading had therefore already started in earnest. We now must similarly look outward as much as possible, actively seeking out new markets beyond the European Union, whether we have trade deals with those places or not – we don’t presently with either China or America, for example, but it doesn’t stop us trading with them.

Nothing will so disprove the Remainers’ lie that Brexit was a Little Englander plot than a growth in our trade with the rest of the world, beyond the hegemony of Brussels. In the unlikely event that we leave the EU trading system with no deal in 11 months’ time, there are further historical parallels from which we can take solace.

Under the Berlin Decree of 1806 and the Milan Decree of 1807, Napoleon Bonaparte announced a total blockade of all British trade with Europe. The policy was entitled “the Continental System” and, under it, all trade with Britain was banned, British ships in European ports were confiscated, and British merchants were arrested as prisoners of war. This was a far worse outcome even than anything Michel Barnier might contemplate after a no-deal Brexit, yet it did not destroy the British economy as Napoleon had intended.

Instead, Britain looked to the rest of the world; she invested in and traded with Asia, Africa, the Near East and Latin America throughout the nine-year operation of the Continental System up to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

Napoleon might even be thought of as ultimately responsible for the diversifying of British trading outlets, and thus as one of the founders of the next, genuinely imperial, phase of the British Empire. Attempting to impose the Continental System led him into the two wars in the Iberian Peninsula and the Russian Campaign of 1812 that broke his power.

The law of unintended consequences is an iron one in human affairs, and if Ursula von der Leyen and Guy Verhofstadt overreach themselves in their keenness to punish Britain for Brexit, and damage the European economies in the process, while energising and diversifying Britain’s, it won’t have been the first time that this has happened historically.

Mention of Napoleon reminds us of another reason why the Remainers’ trope about Leavers being Little Englanders is so very wide of the mark. Throughout her history, Britain has worked with friends and allies, and this will now become more important for us than at any time since we entered the EEC in 1973. A glance at our ancient capacity for coalition-building, however, should give us confidence. Membership of Nato predated our joining the EEC by nearly a quarter of a century, although you might not have recognised that from the dire warnings of isolationism and even World War Three that Project Fear came up with during the referendum campaign. We