Brexit is being betrayed by the political class

The penny is beginning to drop, though full appreciation of the situation is still incomplete. But it is beginning to dawn on much of the British public that something so shocking as to seem surreal is happening to them: that despite their clear decision, in the most massive exercise of universal suffrage ever undertaken, to leave the European Union, the established institutions of governance are attempting to overrule that vote, thereby abandoning democracy.

This is a revolution more profound than the constitutional upheaval of 1832. For generations, even before the vote was extended to all adult citizens, Britons were schooled from their earliest years in the workings of democracy: everybody has an equal say, the ballot is secret and the will of the majority prevails. It was a system and a philosophy so simple as to be almost crude. Nobody could – or ever did – plead that they did not understand it.

The system of democracy by universal suffrage was compared favourably, even chauvinistically, with the inferior systems prevailing elsewhere. It became embedded in the very blood and bone of Britons. If the party one had voted for lost a general election, that was grounds for much grumbling in the Dog and Duck – that very chagrin being an implicit acknowledgement that the other side would be in power for the next five years, since the outcome at the ballot box was sacrosanct.

No government was ever prevented from taking power once it had won an overall majority, however narrow. It was the British way. It was imperfect, arguably deeply flawed, but it was the British way and no legal steps have ever been taken to change it. By that convention, the EU referendum of 23 June, 2016 was a binding instruction from the British electorate to the executive and legislature to implement this country’s prompt and complete withdrawal from the European Union.

It is as absolutely incumbent on both arms of government to execute that settlement as it has always been to effect a change of government after a general election upset. Indeed, more so, since the decision was more focused and the majority of 17.4 million voters larger than at a general election. That is the reality behind all the spin, obfuscation and downright lies with which the opponents of democracy, over the past two and a half years, have attempted to muddy the waters of Brexit.

People didn’t know what they were voting for, is the first weasel claim. Of course they did: they had much longer to consider the issue than in the run-up to a general election and only one proposal to examine. If the supposed ignorance of the voters is to be used as a pretext to discredit the referendum outcome, then every general election result in the past hundred years would need to be annulled.

We have no way of knowing what individual Leave voters intended, bleat the Remoaners, most of them wanted a very soft Brexit. Oh, really? Apart from the fact that the weasel term “soft” Brexit was unknown to those electors at the time of casting their ballot, how many voters do you remember saying, “I’m voting to leave the EU, but I still want to remain in the Single Market, the Customs Union, the European Court and the Jean Claude Juncker wine club”?

Most transparent of all was the great Irish Border canard. In a cynical ploy, Brussels conscripted Leo Varadkar to help conjure fantasies of renewed mayhem if, post-Brexit, the North-South Irish border became visible (it is fairly visible at the moment). Within days, Remainers of every stripe and even Brexiteers vulnerable to groupthink were parroting the inane mantra “No hard border on the island of Ireland”.

Suppose, for a moment, that Mary Tudor had not lost Calais but that the town and a significant enclave of territory around it had remained an English, then British, possession, on the pattern of Gibraltar, until today. One can imagine the elaborate security and customs preparations that British officials would currently be rushing into place ahead of Brexit. Why? Because post-Brexit it would represent the border between the United Kingdom and the European Union. Security there would have to replicate the safeguards at all British ports and airports.

We do not hold Calais. But that hypothetical situation is mirrored in reality by the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Post-Brexit it will no longer be the Irish border: it will be Britain’s sole land frontier with the European Union. As such, it requires to be as “hard” as it needs to be. Otherwise all the precautions taken elsewhere would be pointless.

The whole Irish border scam should have been laughed to scorn on the first day Brussels raised this canard, but our Remainer establishment was only too glad to lend it spurious credibility.

The political class, led by the pseudo-Conservative Party, installed a Remainer prime minister and cabinet, while an overwhelmingly Remainer Parliament obstructed Brexit relentlessly. Theresa May entrusted negotiations with the EU to uber-Remainer Olly Robbins. There was not a scintilla of good faith in all this, the myth of Theresa May’s incompetence is a Tory attempt to disguise the fact that she deliberately sabotaged Brexit from day one. Her incompetence lay solely in constructing a “deal” so grotesque that it could not command a majority in the House of Commons.

Now Brexit is being delayed as the Remainers become emboldened. Suddenly revocation of Article 50 is being openly canvassed. A petition for revocation has attracted three million signatures. So? There are three million Remainers in Britain? Some of us remember when there were 16 million of them. None of this invalidates the formal mandate of 17.4 million voters to Leave.

The nightmarish scenario whereby it is seriously proposed to overturn democracy is reminiscent of the 1960s television serial The Prisoner, featuring Patrick McGoohan. His every attempt to escape from the Village was frustrated by the vigilant acolytes of Number One. The parts of the British public that voted to leave are beginning to feel that way about their imprisonment in the EU.

That public is slow to anger, but it is beginning finally to realize what is at stake here. If the elites were allowed to cancel Brexit, the electorate would never recover its legitimate authority. No referendum would ever again be held. Britain would become a resentful, mutinous captive of the EU – even many EU leaders acknowledge this country would be a permanent disruptive force subverting their project. We have seen the face of tyranny unmasked, never again could there be trust or friendship with Brussels.

Nothing can save the doomed Conservative Party: it will never be forgiven for its betrayal, already a poll shows 40 per cent of its supporters will vote for Farage’s Brexit party. What must be saved is our traditional democratic system. That means facing down the establishment, forcing the implementation of Brexit, removing all Remainers from Parliament and radically remodelling the House of Commons. The British people must recognize and exercise their power. If they choose to do so, they are the masters now.