Happy Brexit Day
As we celebrate the UK regaining its independence today, we think back to the time when the seeds of that event were sown. In 1975 people voted eagerly to remain part of the European Economic Community we had joined in January 1972. The accession of Jacques Delors in 1985 to be President of the European Commission made it clear that the real agenda was the creation of a United States of Europe. Delors, an unelected civil servant, demanded to be treated as a head of state when he visited foreign countries.
Speaking at the UK’s Trade Union Congress in 1988, he in effect bid for the support of fellow Socialists by promising that the leftwing policies the UK people would not vote for could be imposed from a European level. Regulations and controls would come from afar to foster centralization and collectivism. What had been hailed as an economic alliance was now morphing into a super-state, a European Union with its own flag and national anthem, and with ambitions to acquire its own currency and its own army.
The UK never wanted to be part of a United States of Europe, or to surrender its ability to make its own laws to a Brussels-based bureaucracy, but the elite of the political bubble class joined with Brussels in thwarting that desire. Even when the 2016 referendum gave the largest democratic vote in UK history to exit the EU, its acolytes used every piece of legal and political chicanery to prevent that vote from taking effect. Last December UK voters sent another clear message, “Get Brexit done.”
Today is an historic day as the UK steps out from being a peripheral player on the Northwest corner of Europe, always outvoted when it tried to curb the grandiose plans of the Eurocrats. Now we step boldly and confidently into a wider world, one in which we can work for free trade and free peoples. We can now allow UK society to evolve and change as people choose to make it do so, instead of being made constantly to conform to limiting rules made from afar.
The UK faces a bright future as an independent nation, freely choosing with whom it wishes to ally, and freely choosing the rules and conventions that will allow innovation and invention to flourish at home. We are moving out of a restrictive and protectionist trading bloc, and into a world in which we can trade and prosper with like-minded peoples.
The decision that takes effect today will change the future of the EU as well as our own. The myth of constant progress towards ever closer union has been undermined by our departure, and the EU will now have to face the prospect that other members might follow the UK’s lead as they see us prosper.
This is a good day for liberty, for free trade, and for the future of the UK and the world we intend to influence. We celebrate it as we step out into that wider world.
Happy Brexit Day.