Western Morning News (Saturday)
Brexit will help us out of pandemic
Boris Johnson must hold the course to boost our economy, says Tom Trust
LET’S be quite clear about this: anyone calling for a halt to Brexit is in denial of the 2016 Referendum result.
They will justify their dismissal of the biggest vote ever in the UK by claiming that “lies were told” by which they mean that in their opinion these lies were only told by one side. The “Leave” side. Which is, of course, completely untrue. The lying occurred on both sides, and as if there needed to be any proof that “there’s none so blind as them that don’t want to see”, as my old dad used to say, the number of column inches given over in this newspaper’s Letters and Opinion columns to clear listings of the lies told by both sides have gone selectively unread by Remainers.
There are calls from some agoraphobic quarters that Brexit should be stalled/halted/reversed due to the coronavirus crisis. This would be madness if it were allowed to happen. Our economic recovery depends on two factors: 1) the freedom to negotiate trade deals worldwide on terms agreed by us in order to get our economy going as quickly as possible, unencumbered by the lead weight of Brussels bureaucracy around our necks and 2) conditions that our businesses are confident about, as opposed to continuing the uncertainty caused by the obfuscation of a Remainer Establishment which has kept British businesses in a state of uncertainty ever since the referendum even before the virus struck.
Our businesses will not be able to recover if they remain in an atmosphere of doubt and indecision and it is irresponsible of these hard-line
Remainers to want to trash our now struggling economy just because of their political beliefs.
Remember, their belief is that it is better to be governed by people we cannot vote for or against, never mind vote out of office, than to be governed by people we can vote out. This belief in a non-democracy has always baffled me and has never been explained because Europhiles blandly declare that the EU is democratic!
The EU leadership has proved itself to be profoundly ineffective in the last few weeks during which their member states have felt compelled to do their own things. The crisis required a very rapid reaction.
The Brussels bureaucracy proved itself to be utterly incapable of taking any action at all for some vital weeks, during which case and fatality numbers rose exponentially day by day. To take the steps considered necessary by certain member states, many closed their borders – completely at variance with the EU’s “open borders” policy, a cornerstone of its very existence. Brussels sat impotently by as the crisis grew. Their inability, or was it uncomprehending unwillingness, to help member states who asked for it, such as Italy, was blindingly obvious and, for any Europhile, blindingly mistaken, as it has shaken the confidence of many voters across the continent in the relevance of the EU.
These are the people who want to build a federation, to provide some sort of counterbalance to the economic might of the USA and China, to take over the defensive rôle of NATO, to form a bulwark against the alpha-male ego of Putin. Look how effective they were in preventing the annexation of the Crimea – an act they themselves precipitated by their wooing of Ukraine which was a bit like poking the proverbial bear.
As long as Boris Johnson and his chief negotiator hold firm then we will be finally free of the encumbrance of the EU on January 1 2021. The end of June is the next hurdle, though, and there is no doubt that the hard-line Remainers, both within the Establishment and the general public, will become increasingly hysterical and desperate in their efforts to subvert the Referendum result.
If the EU remains determined to keep us somehow within their embrace, either by keeping us bound by EU rules or beholden to the European Court of Justice – and it has already, as I write, apparently accepted our stance on fishing – then it will cause the negotiations to flounder and an exit on World Trade Organisation terms will have to occur.
The Remainers really will start to tear their hair out then; but if the EU at last realise that we are intent on becoming a free, independent, self-governing nation once again then good sense may prevail and a mutually beneficial trade deal will be struck.
■ Tom Trust is a retired teacher living in Redruth