Let’s grab our chance to be Singapore on Thames... and on the Irwell, the Mersey, the Clyde and the Tyne as well

THOSE who lose in fair democratic contests are entitled to be disappointed and even angry. That is only reasonable. Defeat hurts. But they are not entitled to try to undo the verdict of the polls. In fact it is essential for the smooth running and the survival of democracy that the defeated side concedes. Having conceded, they can then have a healthy discussion about why they lost.

When political parties are beaten, they generally go through a period of self-examination and reform, which often ends in them returning to power. Frequently they realise that they need to modernise their manifestos and abandon played-out obsessions if they are to get back into the power game.

Alas, this process is not possible after a referendum, as it would be after an Election. For this was not a clash of parties but a clash of two increasingly separate parts of Britain, which really ought to come together again for the sake of the country they both live in and love.

So there was no leadership on the defeated side, ready to take responsibility for the setback, or ready to re-examine its position. There was just a series of Remainer groups all still filled with resentment, while few of them were really interested in reconciling themselves to the post-Brexit world.

So since the British people voted to leave the EU five years ago, far too many Remainers have refused to accept that they were beaten, let alone that they should have been beaten. So they have done all that they could, through the courts, in Parliament and perhaps most of all in pro-EU media, to undermine and frustrate the unquestioned result.

And they are still at it, trying to reverse Brexit, campaigning to return to the uncontrolled immigration of Britain’s EU era. How else can we explain the various shroud-waving panics in which shortages of goods and certain types of worker are all explained by the decision to leave the EU? It is barely possible to watch or listen to the BBC without being exposed to doom-packed descriptions of shortages now, and gloom-tinged warnings of shortages to come.

Well, the people of this country voted decisively for British independence, and also for this country to become a high-wage, high-skilled economy. But still the Europhile classes will use any method they can to take us back to the days of imported cheap labour. How strange it is to see the Labour Party, founded to protect and promote the interests of the working people of this country, still yearning for the days of open borders.

Of course our independence now gives us freedom to tweak immigration and visa regulations to cope with temporary shortages, as every sovereign nation can and should. But that is wholly different from abandoning one of the key aspects of a proper country – the power to decide who can come here and who can live here.

So we must not be deflected from the Government’s mediumterm aim, to ensure proper rewards for British workers and to stimulate the growth of highskilled employment served by a well-educated population.

In a world that does not owe us a living, and in which we must live on our wits rather than resting on our laurels, this is really the only feasible future.

Even the most determined Remainer must come to see, in time, that this is now a viable and essential national policy, and that Britain is better off pursuing it than it was before. In this way we can use Brexit as an opportunity to do things better than we used to do them under the burden of Brussels’ law and regulation.

As the Conservatives gather for their conference in Manchester, one of the birthplaces of our first great Industrial Revolution, the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues have the opportunity and the duty to defend and advance the decision taken by the British people five years ago. Let other European nations, stuck in the outdated model of currency union and centralised, sclerotic regulation, stagnate and tread water. Britain now has the chance to become Singapore-on-Thames – and on the Irwell, the Mersey, the Clyde and the Tyne as well.

The practical benefits of our new status, already demonstrated so brilliantly by the British vaccine triumph, must now be spread so widely that even the most determined Remainers will come to see that leaving was right, and join in the effort to make independent Britain the success it ought to be.