“Brexit means Brexit…there must be no attempt to remain inside the EU, no attempt to re-join it through the back door and no second referendum.” Theresa May, June 30th 2016
Like many Leave voters, I’ve been chewing my lip and trying to keep my own counsel for months as I’ve watched our government surrender concession after concession to the EU, while receiving the grand total of nothing in return. The exit bill, the order of negotiations, the transition period and the unending stream of calculated insults emanating from Brussels have been difficult to endure, but I’ve kept my eye firmly on the greater prize of Britain once again becoming a self-governing and independent nation state, ready to plot a new course in our rapidly changing world.
I’m not easily shocked, but the revelation that our own Prime Minister has been actively plotting to do the very thing she swore not to do when she was entrusted with the keys to Downing Street has taken some getting over. I know the word “plotting” has some very dark and emotive connotations, but it’s completely justified. There’s absolutely no chance that the Chequers agreement is something that was just scribbled on the back of an envelope as the PM awoke from a recurring Brexit nightmare one stormy night. It’s far too sophisticated for that, having been deliberately designed to deceive by talking positively about sovereignty, while vaguely referring to some unspecified “common rulebook.” Anyone who understands anything about the EU will spot Brussels’ fingerprints all over a document such as this.
And just who will be writing, updating, interpreting and arbitrating this exciting new common rulebook I wonder? Now let me think…
Who would’ve thought that those swivel-eyed Brexit extremists were right all along when they warned against putting a Remainer in Number 10? However, it’s now crystal clear that our Prime Minister hasn’t really embraced the idea of leaving the European Union and making autonomous decisions without its advice or approval. Indeed, we now know that she’s been consciously and secretly plotting to keep us shackled to that failing institution and bound to their our shared “common rulebook” indefinitely. If that’s not re-joining the EU via the back door, then I really don’t know what is.
However, even if this chequered “turd rolled in glitter” does come to pass in its current form, there’s still good cause for optimism in the longer-term. Let’s not forget that Article 50 has already been triggered and, more importantly, the European Withdrawal Act has now passed into law, despite a co-ordinated campaign of sabotage by an increasingly desperate establishment which has demonstrated it will never accept the referendum result.
The significance of these Brexit triumphs should not be forgotten, because they mean that EU law will no longer be supreme in the UK after March 29th 2019. This date is now enshrined in UK law, and the dread European Communities Act 1972 is set to be repealed on that same day. The current babble of loose talk about simply abandoning Brexit altogether fails to acknowledge that any changes to our current exit arrangements would require further legislation via Parliament. Good luck with that.
Although at least half the country (and I suspect more) is rightly up in arms about May’s sloppy stich-up at Chequers last week, any future legal partnership with the EU must, by definition, be an arrangement ratified by the UK Parliament, and there’s little evidence that such a disastrous deal would ever make it through the Commons. How deliciously ironic it is that we can thank the reliably condescending and galactically over-entitled Gina Miller for that Supreme Court precedent. Thanks Gina, I know you’ll be pleased because I’m sure this is exactly what you had in mind when you set out to recycle, re-package, and re-brand an establishment attempt to overturn the referendum as a deeply held and strangely sudden conversion to the cause of Parliamentary sovereignty. Is anyone giving odds on Miller taking up some kind of Brussels role when we’re finally out? She’s a natural.
I could continue writing here, but my eyes have started to swivel.
Images courtesy of Peter Skadberg & Lorenzo Gonzalez at FreeImages.com
