‘Freedom and power bring responsibility’

Tomorrow (Friday) at midnight local time the EU institutions in Brussels will lower their British flags for a final time.

Some still hope that one day they will go back up, but that is extremely unlikely.

Almost as unlikely, in my view, as the chance that the Indians would reverse the ceremony which took place in Delhi ‘at the stroke of the midnight hour’ on August 15 ,1947, when the British flag was lowered and the new national flag was hoisted in its place.

There are of course points of profound contrast between the two events, but also some points of similarity.

In his famous ‘Tryst with Destiny’ address – the likes of which we could not expect from any contemporary British politician – Prime Minister Nehru pointed out that ‘freedom and power bring responsibility’, and referred to the Assembly as ‘a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India’.

After six decades of surreptitiously allowing our national sovereignty to wither, willingly submitting to proto-federal

European authorities while publicly denying that reality, some of our own politicians would now do well to pay heed to such words.

Upon our withdrawal from the EU treaties, with their paramount commitment to an inexorable process of ‘ever closer union’ leading to the fully federal, sovereign,

United States of Europe foreshadowed in the 1950 Schuman Declaration, we will go our own national constitutional way and our neighbours will continue with theirs as they see fit.

We will be deeply interested spectators as they decide whether it is indeed their constitutional destiny to fulfill that original federal ambition; but if so it will not be a destiny that we will share, or indeed have ever wanted to share, or are ever likely to want to share.

And nor should our federalist politicians, starting with Harold Macmillan, have tried to impose that on us by stealth.

Dr D R COOPER Belmont Park Avenue

Maidenhead