LIVE 24-SEVEN
DIGBY LORD JONES THOUGHTS FOR JULY
The Brits hate tyrants. We had a Civil War to get rid of one in the 1640s; in fact, Charles I had his head chopped off. As our Constitutional Monarchy developed over the following centuries, our burgeoning Parliamentary Democracy grew into what we live in today.
We have spent stupendous amounts of blood and treasure down the years fighting and destroying tyrants from elsewhere. Some directly threatened our home and freedom, (Philip II of Spain, Napoleon and Hitler) whilst some did so, but more indirectly and from afar, such as the Soviet Union or Saddam Hussein.
Our sense of freedom (of speech, of worship, of assembly) is all wrapped up in our loose definition of ‘democracy’ and down the decades we have left the fulfilment of “all that” to Parliament, in fact we have taken it all for granted for a long time.
However, on 23rd June two years ago, Parliament abrogated its responsibility in the democratic equation on a specific major issue to us, the British people. We (not Parliament) got to decide on whether or not the United Kingdom of Britain & Northern Ireland would remain a member of the European Union.
The majority of both houses of Parliament, civil servants, big business, universities and some traditional media...what one might term The Establishment...had the shock of their lives. How dare the uppity peasants upset the comfortable apple cart!
The unelected, unaccountable panjandrums in Brussels were fair put off their Bordeaux and Cognac by the disgraceful ingratitude of les Rosbifs. They started plotting punishment (“pour encourager les autres”) just as soon as they realised they could not revert to their usual Plan B when faced with a member state whose referendum result was not to their liking (as happened in Ireland, the Netherlands and France) which was to hold another referendum (and presumably another after that ...) until they got the answer they wanted.
So a weak UK Government attempts to make Brexit a reality. It is faced with the potent opposition of:
• Labour, Liberal and Scottish Nationalist Parties turning the whole thing into a tribal, party political scrap
• An EU, running scared (and a Germany running even more scared since it will be picking up the bill for the loss of UK contributions) acting as if it holds all the aces
• The Remoaners of the Establishment sabotaging any effort being made to negotiate leaving the EU, usually hypocritically starting with the lie, “Of course we respect the result of the Referendum but...”
• An apparent loss of national confidence in just how important a country we are, how we as the fifth largest economy on earth can take the pearl out of the oyster of globalisation if only we all pull together as ‘One Nation’.
Two years ago, 17.2 million people to take back control. The Brexit vote came from many different views, from those on immigration to juristic power, from the lack of accountability in remote Lords and Masters in Brussels or Berlin to simply the opportunity to give the London-based Establishment a good kick up the bum. But a wish to ground control back in a democratically-elected, UK-based government was clear.
In Brexit terms, that means:
• Control of our borders • Supremacy of our judges • Competence to negotiate our own trade deals around the world and not be subject to what suits France and Germany.
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