Let us welcome the historic rebirth of a sovereign Britain
Today is the day. After 47 years of sovereignty submerged beneath the Brussels behemoth and three and a half years devoted to frustrating the attempts by the EU fifth column within our domestic elites to overrule the result of the biggest democratic exercise in our history, Britain finally reclaims its place among the sovereign nations of the world.
Membership of the European Union was a catastrophic mistake. The people of Britain were lured into the snare by an endless series of false prospectuses, deceit and downright lies. Our accidental protector was Charles de Gaulle, whose implacable “Non!” deferred our entry into the EEC for years. De Gaulle himself believed in a Europe des patries and would have given short shrift to the integrationist policies being championed by his remote successor Emmanuel Macron.
The monstrosity whose disintegration we shall now watch with a mixture of morbid curiosity and satisfaction from the safety of offshore was introduced by a process of osmosis: who could possibly feel threatened by a Coal and Steel Community? The project, ironically, was conceived by its founders not only as a political project, but as a culturally Christian endeavour – a kind of restoration of the Holy Roman Empire.
In post-War Europe, groping around uncertainly for security and guarantees of peace in the face of an escalating Cold War, by coincidence three Catholic statesmen had come to dominate the European geopolitical landscape by 1950. They were Robert Schuman, the foreign minister of France; Konrad Adenauer, chancellor of West Germany; and Alcide De Gasperi, prime minister of Italy. So devout was Schuman that he has been declared a “servant of God” by the Church, the first step towards beatification.
This Catholic influence in the founding of the European Steel and Coal Community (ESCC) might seem to play to the delusions of those today who make the historically illiterate error of comparing Brexit to the English Reformation. In that, they echo Ian Paisley’s strident condemnations of the Treaty of Rome. Any comparison of the mainly spiritual powers of the Pope, plus the modest dues of Peter’s Pence and Annates paid for the upkeep of the Church, before the Reformation is completely derisory compared to the vast powers and massive fiscal exactions of the EU.
In any case, this initially Catholic inspiration was being dissipated as early as 1950: when Schuman read the Declaration that bears his name, founding the ESCC, the text had already been edited by Jean Monnet. Thereafter, relentless secularism increasingly captured the European project. When the EU was drawing up its constitution in 2004 the Vatican and seven member states pressed in vain for even the briefest acknowledgement of Europe’s Christian heritage. Later, on the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, Benedict XVI condemned the EU’s increasing marginalization of Christianity as “apostasy of itself”.
That was true even in a secular sense: the present-day European Union is totally deracinated from its original philosophy and character. It no longer knows what it is or aspires to be. No two member states share the same vision. Just as the north-south divide has brought the euro currency to the brink of collapse, interpretations of the EU as diverse as those prevailing in France and Hungary create an irreducible tension that can never be resolved except by either the reduction of the number of member states or the dissolution of the whole Heath-Robinson contraption.
One thing is certain: the EU is not democratic. Unelected apparatchiks hold the reins of power. Any attempt at asserting democratic values has – until the success of Brexit – been cynically and ruthlessly crushed. This is most observable in the EU’s treatment of referenda in member states. As long ago as 1992 a referendum in Denmark rejected the Maastricht Treaty. Some cosmetic changes were made, including exempting Denmark from adopting the euro, and the following year the Danes held a second referendum and obediently fell into line.
Because the Irish constitution requires all treaties to be subjected to plebiscite, in 2001 a referendum was held in Ireland on the Treaty of Nice, which was rejected. After frenzied propaganda by the establishment Ireland voted again in 2002 and accepted the Nice Treaty, with a face-saving provision of exemption from joining any future EU army.
In 2005 referenda in France and the Netherlands both rejected the draft EU constitution. Since forcing a re-run in two countries would have been bad PR, Brussels re-packaged the constitution as the Lisbon Treaty. But a referendum in Ireland in 2008 rejected the treaty, so 16 months later the Irish were required to vote again and this time they came up with the right result.
With that history of consistent refusals to accept a democratic verdict it is unsurprising that the EU imagined that, with the help of the Remainers in Britain, it should be possible to force the UK to hold a second referendum, after years of Project Fear scaremongering, and secure a penitent revocation of Article 50, with a chastened Britain returning to the EU fold to be treated with obloquy for the indefinite future.
The British, happily, are made of sterner stuff and cherish the rights for which they made large sacrifices in two world wars. So, we are leaving, and not before time. Since we joined the EEC in 1973 this country has contributed £215bn to the EEC/EU budget. And for what? The continual erosion of our independence, the imposition of foreign courts and laws on our legal system, the hobbling of our natural instincts of entrepreneurship.
We have always been a net contributor to the EU: apart from propagandist froth, no British project has ever benefited from “European money” – only from a portion of our taxpayers’ money returned to us on its own terms by Brussels. So far from benefiting from EU membership, three decades of Brussels regulations have hobbled productivity and real wages, causing loss of growth of around 0.2 per cent annually, totalling £120bn over 30 years.
Now it is over. The psychological effect of restored sovereignty will be enormous. It must be reflected in Britain’s approach to the 11-month negotiations during the transition period. Michel Barnier must be made to realize he is dealing with a wholly different entity from the cap-in-hand suppliant that was Theresa May.
Domestically, the government has got off to a bad start, losing the opportunity to draw a line under the past by instantly excluding Huawei and scrapping HS2. That would have sent a robust message to Brussels which still believes the deep state is in control in Whitehall. Our negotiating position must be unyielding: no extension after 31 December, no concessions on fisheries, no ECJ, no alignment with the regulations that have for too long crippled enterprise in this country.
It will be virtually impossible for a defeated and discredited Remoaner rump to demonize a WTO exit if EU intransigence makes it inevitable. The mood is confident; we are a great nation. When the present Queen came to the throne there was much optimistic talk, despite the weakness of our post-War economy and the continuing dissolution of our Empire, of a “New Elizabethan Age”.
An establishment philosophy of managed decline and the constrictions of EU membership stifled that aspiration. Perhaps now, in the later stages of the reign, that neo-Elizabethan vision can finally be attained. Welcome, Brexit, and welcome the return to the world stage of a sovereign, independent Britain.