Brexit: time to start coining it!
Boris to strike unifying tone as new 50p marks low-key EU departure
WHEN Brexiteers buy a drink to toast Britain’s belated departure from the European Union later this week, they will be able to pay for it using a special celebratory coin minted for the occasion.
More than three million new 50p coins will enter circulation on Friday morning, bearing the inscription ‘Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations’.
And Prime Minister Boris Johnson will hold a special meeting of the Cabinet et in the North of England as part of the January anuary 31 commemorations – before launchaunching a ‘Ready to Trade’ campaign aign on Saturday in 17 cities across 13 non-EU nations in a post-Brexit xit trade blitz.
Announcing the plans, Mr r Johnson struck a unifying tone by saying: ‘No matter how you voted in 2016, it is the time to look ahead with confidence to the global, trail-blazing country we will become over the next decade and heal past divisions.
‘That is what I will be doing on January 31 and I urge everyone one across the UK to do the same.’ ’
The delay to Brexit, which h was originally set for March 2019, meant that a million of the original iginal commemorative coins had t to b be melted down last year.
Chancellor Sajid Javid, who is also Master of the Mint, will present one of the new coins to Mr Johnson this week.
A further seven million will be released into circulation later this year when the Royal Mint will open its doors for 24 hours to let people strike their own commemorative Brexit coins.
With the Government insisting it wants a subdued, non-triumphalist approach to Brexit Day, Mr Johnson will host a ‘ People’s PMQs’ [ Prime Minister’s Questions] on Wednesday and children will be invited to Downing Street on Thursd day, so they can ask Mr Johnson questions about t he future he intends to build for the next generation. He will address the nation o on Friday at 10pm, as a clock pro projected on to No 10 Downing St r e e t c o unt s down to t he mome moment of Brexit itself at 11pm – midni midnight in Brussels – amid a comm commemorative light display ‘symbolisin bolising the strength and unity of our f four nations’. Union Jacks will also line Parliament Square in London, while government buildings in Whitehall will be l i t up red, white and blue throughout the evening. Parliament Square will also be the scene of a celebration organised by Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, with God Save The Queen performed by a band at 11pm. Mr Farage said last night: ‘It will be celebratory. There will be music and singing. It will be a goodnatured, upbeat, optimistic genuine celebration with no direct political edge whatsoever.’
Ardent Brexiteer Tory MP Mark Francois, who will also be attending, said: ‘I’m not going to bed. I’m going to stay and watch the sun rise on a free country.’
Other events are planned in Warrington, Doncaster and Surrey Heath, while Kettering MP Philip Hollobone says he will join a ‘good old knees-up’ at his local pub.
For those looking for a more upmarket celebration, The Bow Group think tank is selling £ 90 tickets for a three-course dinner with the original Maastricht rebels from John Major’s 1990-97 Government. Former Cabinet minister Sir John Redwood has been booked as the guest of honour.
In addition, the pub chain Wetherspoon is cutting the price of a number of European drinks to mark Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, following 47 years as a member.
Its ‘Let’s stay friends’ promotion offers customers around 60p off ten drinks that originate from Europe and the UK, including Spanish Estrella Galicia, German Beck’s, Italian Peroni, Polish Tyskie and Jameson Irish whiskey.
Wetherspoon chairman Tim Martin said: ‘Many of our customers
are keen to celebrate Brexit. At the same time, we want to remain friends with our European neighbours and offer a range of drinks at an excellent price.’
Higher up the drinks market, the French company Gold Emotion is selling Brexit Day sparkling rosé for £148. Its bottle of Pinot Noir is engraved with a golden Union Jack and the words ‘Brexit. We made history’.
With Brexiteers across the UK expected to hold their own parties, the activist group Conservative Progress is selling £ 22.15 party packs that include bunting, flags and posters.
Pro-EU groups are making their own plans, including a candlelit vigil in Oxford. The Oxford European Association will hand out croissants and the EU flag will be flown from the Town Hall.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, will open City Hall on Friday for European Londoners and their families, with officials offering advice on t he EU settl ement scheme. There will also be ‘emotional support’ services available.
More than 14,000 people are said to have expressed interest in pro- EU counter- demonstrations in Westminster.
But Jacob Rees-Mogg tells Mail on Sunday readers today, right, that last month’s General Election saw the country vote for ‘ a reviving wave of blue MPs’ who have taken the brakes off Brexit, setting the scene for ‘the biggest restoration of vitality to our l and in generations’, sparking ‘ a decade of renewal’.
The Government’s ‘ Ready to Trade’ campaign involves digital outdoor advertising in countries ranging from Australia to China, and India to America. Officials say it emphasises the ‘Great’ in Great Britain and they claim that those who have seen it are now twice as keen to trade with the UK.
FINALLY, the great day of our departure from the European Union is almost upon us. At 11pm GMT on Friday, January 31, Britain becomes a fully independent nation for the first time in almost half a century.
When Parliament decided to join the then Common Market in October 1972, and when a referendum confirmed t hat decision in June 1975, many of those involved were not fully aware of what a momentous step they were taking.
The Labour l e a der Hugh Gaitskell, then almost alone among mainstream politicians, had warned correctly in 1962 that our membership would be ‘the end of Britain as an independent nation state… the end of a thousand years of history’, adding: ‘You may say, “All right, let it end!” But, my goodness, it’s a decision that needs a little care and thought.’
The care and thought, sadly, came too late, and it was only the actual experience of the European Union’s ever-expanding interference in our national life – accelerating after the 1980s – that brought home the truth of Gaitskell’s prophecy.
Increasingly, almost every aspect of our national life from our weights and measures, our fisheries and farming, to the way our laws were made and the passports we carry, were shaped by powers that lay outside our control. At one point we came close to abandoning the pound sterling. And we did lose control of our borders.
Now we have the most amazing second chance.
Unlike so many other great nations that have meekly submitted to such takeovers, we have reasserted our former freedom in a referendum and then in December’s decisive Election, which confirmed that vote. Parliament has at last done its duty and reversed the error of October 1972.
Within days we shall once again be free to set and enforce our own terms of trade, to control our own territorial seas, decide who may and who may not cross our frontiers, make and enforce our own laws free from interference by supranational courts, to extradite or not on our own decision. If we wish to be free to trade once again at home in our own customary measurements, we can do so. We can have British passports, not EU travel documents.
Some of these things may be symbolic and emotional, and none the worse for that. Such matters count in the characters of nations.
Some will be tough to negotiate and enact. But all are thrilling recoveries of lost liberty, an opportunity unmatched in modern times for a national revival of spirit and enterprise.
So we all ought to live up to this. And our Government needs to live up to it as well. Perhaps exhausted by the sheer effort of getting Brexit done, Boris Johnson has seemed in the past few weeks to be treading water. Now he must recover the energy that won him the Election, and seize the best chance for success and prosperity this country has had in many decades.