LIBERATION DAY
LISTENING to what the British media has to say, both written and broadcast, you would think the UK government had no idea at all about what they want to achieve in their negotiations with the EU. What utter codswallop! Chancellor Hammond sounds a bit wobbly on Brexit, but Britain’s overall aims were made clear (and agreed by the Cabinet) when Theresa May made her Lancaster House speech months ago.
The UK is leaving the EU and its institutions in 2019. Those institutions include the Single Market, Customs Union and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The PM couldn’t have made it clearer. Other ministers have repeated that message on countless occasions. The UK wants its Parliament to be sovereign, to be free to make its own laws at home and trade deals across the world, with whoever it wishes. Most importantly, it wants control of its own borders. That is what sovereign, independent nations do.
That’s what the British public voted for, by a clear majority. They were asked if they wanted to leave the EU. They said “yes”. They were not asked: “Do you want to leave only bits of it?” Whether there is a two-year “transition period” or not, after 2019 the ultimate Brexit destination remains exactly the same, as ministers are set to make even clearer over the next few weeks.
As for the UK’s future trading relationship with the EU, we require a “bespoke trade deal” designed to allow continued tariff-free trade between ourselves and our former European partners. Canada has such a “bespoke trade deal” with the EU, as do many other countries. What’s the problem with an independent UK having one? The answer is: there isn’t.
The only problem is the EU’s total refusal to accept this great truth. They keep telling us we cannot have tariff-free access to the Single Market and “not be in it”. So how come Canada has? Have they joined the EU? Of course not. The irony is that the future trading arrangements the UK wants is exactly what the EU needs. They sell way more to us than we sell to them. They know that as well as we do.
So why are the EU’s officials digging their heels in? Are EU exporters queuing up to throw away all that export trade with one of their biggest markets? Of course not. The plain truth is that the European Commission in Brussels is scared to death of the UK leaving and will put every obstacle in our path to prevent it, in the hope we will get fed up and change our minds. At my school, we called it bullying and the bully usually got his comeuppance. So will the EU.
All across Europe, the populations of member states are turning against the EU and those that support it, voting in ever increasing numbers for antiEU parties (some of them being unsavoury in the extreme) and, even more worrying for the Commission, considering holding referendums like Britain did. No wonder Brussels is at panic stations, especially since the French president recently admitted that if France had a referendum, even they would vote to leave (that is why there won’t be one).
Imagine how the presently all-powerful EU bureaucrats must feel. Their empire is collapsing around them. Britain actually leaving could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back — the domino that sets the others off — especially as the EU knows full well that an independent Britain, free of Brussels bureaucracy, free to return to its historically successful roots, once again trading freely across the world, will be one of the 21st century’s great success stories. They are quaking in their EU boots.
All those nicely placed, fatsalaried and pensioned EU bureaucrats fear for their future, not ours. That is why they are being difficult when the Brexit issue isn’t. That is why their UK Remain supporters hang on their every obstructive word and try to persuade us that remaining in the Single Market, the jurisdiction of the ECJ and the Customs Union are compatible with the concept of Brexit. They aren’t. They should not even be an issue. That was all settled when we voted to leave.
Deal or no deal, we ARE leaving. The terms HAVE been made clear. The EU just doesn’t like them. One day soon, these great Brexit truths will become self-evident. If Britain leaving prompts the inevitable collapse of the EU, so be it. I shall shed no tears. It wouldn’t be the first time the UK has saved Europe from itself, at much greater cost than anything facing us now. Have faith. Liberation Day is at hand.