Despite the Remainers’ best efforts to crush Brexit, democracy will prevail

The Tories and Labour will struggle to survive if they mimic the EU’S open disdain for the voters

My apologies for recent absence from this space: I have been attempting to finish my late Thatcher studies. As a result of this temporary detachment, it has been easier to discern a deeper pattern in the repetitious deadlock in Parliament and the astonishing fact that we are now about to take part in elections for a European Parliament in which we do not intend to sit. This pattern first became visible 30 years ago.

But before I explain this, did you see Brexit: Behind Closed Doors on Wednesday and Thursday nights? Probably not, since it was on BBC 4, and your idea of fun may not involve being trapped in the colourless offices of the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg for two hours. As theatre, the programme resembled the famous line and stage direction of Waiting for Godot, “‘Let’s go.’ They do not move.”

The film was a fly-on-the-wall documentary following Guy Verhofstadt, the European

Parliament’s Brexit Coordinator, from the start of the Brexit negotiations until now. Despite his august title, M Verhofstadt is not coordinating Brexit. If the documentary had a fault, it was that the fly was on the wrong wall. The European Parliament – thank goodness – has only a secondary role. The right walls to be on are those of the European Commission, watching Michel Barnier, Jean-claude Juncker etc, those of Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron and those of 10 Downing Street. M Verhofstadt may seek the coveted crown of best-known Belgian since Tintin, but he is little more than a noisy spectator.

The film did capture several important points, though. One was the perfect incompetence of the British negotiating team, notably David Davis, Olly Robbins (who reportedly said he would rather be a Belgian) and Theresa May herself. Another was the EU’S exploitation of the Republic of Ireland to conceal its own desire to control Ireland’s land border with the United Kingdom. A third was M Barnier’s clear understanding that what Mrs May has wanted all along, despite her frequent protestations to the contrary, is a customs union.

Perhaps most striking, however, was what was absent. At no point did Guy the Great and his rather foul-mouthed pals give the slightest thought to why all this was happening, which is that more than 30 million British people had voted on it, and the majority had decided to leave. Contempt for Britain was almost unqualified, except that M Verhofstadt enjoyed driving his Aston Martin at Silverstone. The only EU person who showed a faint glimmer of any sense of the context was M Barnier himself, who spoke of the need “to be respectful to the British people” and analysed the situation as “more than weariness, a real serious crisis in the UK”.

Even more striking by its absence was any mention by M Verhofstadt and his fellow MEPS of their own voters. They never once even pretended to be interested in their constituents. I don’t think the word “democracy” crossed their lips. Their identification with the purposes of the EU’S machine, as opposed to its people, was complete.

This is the problem. It has been the problem since the EU’S conception, and it is unalterable under the present structure. Mrs Thatcher came to see this. That is why, in late 1990, she began to say in public that there should be a referendum on Brussels’s planned single currency (which became the euro). It – plus personal exasperation – is why Geoffrey Howe and others at the top of the Tory party could bear her no longer.

The whole, long struggle in Britain since then has been about whether our people should be allowed to decide their future. In 2016 – in what was, from his point of view, a fatal mistake – David Cameron let us do so. We voted to reclaim that future. That is what M Verhofstadt & Co will never forgive.

It is also what Mrs May & Co will never understand. Our movement towards national liberation has built slowly and runs deep. It is not to be appeased by technical fixes. Her negotiating psychology has always been that of trying to stave off a blow rather than to chart a new course. Brussels has smelt her fear; hence the bad deal she swore she would never make.

And hence, because of the impasse Mrs May has created, these are the first European elections in history for which Leavers can feel real enthusiasm. They have no purpose at all except to allow us to insist we still mean what we said in 2016 and that we will not be fobbed off, as we have been by every single Conservative leader (even including Mrs Thatcher over the Single European Act) in the entire history of our European relationship. If the Tories and Labour do badly in these elections and the Brexit Party does well, the result will be completely deserved, and almost cost-free.

Funnily enough, though, I sympathise with those pleasant, moderate centrists who fear populism. They are right that many raging across the continent in these elections have no understanding of how to govern, and that some of them are downright unpleasant. We do need political parties with experience, balance, the skills of elites and so on. Nigel Farage is a great showman, and one wishes him every success on May 23, but there is not the faintest evidence he would be any good at running the country.

The trouble, however, is that these moderate establishment figures do not understand the remedy. Centrist Tories like to say that their party needs to be “broad-based”, which is true, but they use this as a coded criticism of Brexit. They do not realise that Brexit can provide that broad base, including not only all Leave voters, but the high number of Remain voters who now think we should get on and leave. They never seem to ask themselves why its cause has grown and grown despite their best efforts – and those of the Labour Party – to crush it.

If we leave on terms that give us real freedom – which now, given everything that has happened, almost certainly means with no deal – we shall at last be in a position to audit all policy in the light of how well it serves Britain and its people. Take, because of events this week, foreign policy. Why does Britain still feel that its EU ties force it to side with Iran rather than the United States, placating an enemy and snubbing a friend? Why does Mrs May feel that sticking with China and Huawei is safer than maintaining the trust of our most important intelligence and security partner?

Or take green issues. Why do we not treat issues of pollution scientifically, rather than giving in to unprovable assertions from schoolgirls about the imminent end of the world? For the foreseeable future, most people will want to keep their cars, and will want energy prices that are not artificially increased in the name of abstract virtue.

Voters are not good at proposing detailed policy. They are not supposed to be. What they are quick to spot, however, is when they are being patronised or disdained. This disdain is inherent in the structure of the EU. It has not, historically, been inherent in that of the Conservative or Labour parties. As a result, they have still – just – survived the implosion of normal politics on the Continent. If they don’t get the message now, though, both could be half-dead by the next election.

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