THOSE against Britain leaving the EU have used every device possible to prevent the majority vote of the 2016 referendum being acted upon. A particularly sore point for them is that they lost the referendum by what they claim was a narrow majority, fuelling their cries for, among other things, a second vote. (If that was held, and it too was a narrow verdict, then what about the best of three? Would they support that? )
One of the features of our form of democracy is it has remained remarkably stable for hundreds of years. Not only have we developed a system with built-in checks and balances to ensure the sovereignty of the people, but also conventions determining political behaviour. Chief amongst these has been the expectation that the losers in a vote or an election accept defeat gracefully and make way for the group or party which has won. Even when the margin of defeat is narrow, the Prime Minister packs his or her bags and leaves No 10, often within hours. There are no coups, no army takeovers, no bitter factions on the losing side setting out to interrupt the process. Not, that is, until now. The Remainers’ response to losing has struck a shrill, if not a hysterical, note that is alien to how we have conducted our affairs over many centuries.
What I (and no doubt many others) find difficult to understand is that in their desperation to remain in the European Union, they seem unconcerned that by doing so, we will, sooner rather than later, lose our country. The ambition of the EU leadership to rule over a powerful European Empire is plain to see. There can be little doubt that they want control, eventually, over every member state. This process is already well advanced. Over 70 per cent of our laws emanate from the EU. Remainers hate to be reminded that the most important reason Brexiteers voted to leave was to regain our independence. It was not primarily concerns over economic conditions or even immigration.
However, there are signs that, on this issue, the penny may have at last dropped for some in the Remain camp. In February of this year a postgraduate student at the LSE wrote an article whose purpose was to explain to sceptics that these fears were unfounded and that the EU was not as anti-democratic as many of us believed.
The writer is either naïve, or knows what she is doing and is out to hoodwink us. Her own description shows how the Commission (the unelected body) has the dominant position in EU governance, while, at the same time, pretending to have mechanisms which make it ‘accountable to the voters’. What is also revealed is how indirect and obscure this is.
For example, the Council, (the elected part of the machinery) is said to set the ‘overall direction’ of EU policies. But this can mean anything. It remains a fact that the broader and less defined the overall policies are, the easier it is for the Commission (the unelected part) to interpret these ‘broad proposals’ in whatever way they like. It is only a matter of guile to present them as if they are following the ’broad direction’ of the Council, when in fact they represent the ideas of the bureaucrats.
But even if this were not the case, the set-up gives the Commission too much power. This is shown by the fact that it is the Commission that proposes EU legislation, not the elected members (in a democratic system this would never be allowed) and, as said, the broad and ill-defined nature of the Council’s direction means the Commission can propose what laws they like.
I have had discussions with an experienced MEP who is familiar with how the EU operates, and he is quite clear that it is the Commission which decides on what laws should be passed, and that the Council’s influence is negligible. What is more, he said that although in theory the EU parliament can block the commission’s proposals for legislation, in practice it acts as a rubber-stamping operation.
In summary, because the Commission not only decides on what laws should be passed, but also manages their implementation, the nub of EU legislative work is in their hands. The rest of the machinery is an expensive masquerade.
This is what makes them so dangerous. They have gone to great lengths to set up a machine which they can run in whatever direction they want, without interruption or interference from the general public.
In Britain, because parliament creates the laws, and we elect MPs directly, we can get rid of them at a general election if we are not happy with the laws they pass.
If we are unhappy with what the EU is doing, we can elect different MEPs, but it will make no difference, because their influence is minimal. If we complain about what the Commission is doing, they will say they are interpreting the broad directives of the elected council. If we disagree we can’t get rid of them.
Over the last three years I have come to believe that the EU elite have achieved what previous dictators tried to achieve by force, and that the European Union is run by a group of political gangsters who have been corrupted by power and the smell of riches beyond anyone’s dreams.
I also believe that we are now more in danger of losing our country than we were in 1940 when Hitler seriously considered invading Britain. Although his intentions were serious, there were a number of factors which militated against it, such his natural dithering, his fear of the Royal Navy, the Luftwaffe’s failure to gain ascendency in the air over the Channel and the British mainland, and his pre-occupation with invading Russia.
In the present case, there are fewer obvious factors acting against the possibility of us losing our country. For example, at least, when we fought the Germans, the general public in Britain and its parliament were on the same side. This is no longer the case. The public now stand alone against, on the one hand, its own ruling elite who have not just ignored us, but defied us, and on the other, a corrupt EU machinery which wants to retain (and increase) its control of us, at any cost.
Therefore, if we don’t fight for our country, we will lose it, and end up as a parish in the United States of Europe, to be ruled by a foreign-dominated power group we cannot vote out. We fought WW2, at the cost of untold lives, bankrupting ourselves in the process, to avoid just this.
Most political differences in Britain, whether in small or great councils, are settled by compromise. Our natural inclination and skill in solving problems this way is known and admired throughout the world. But some matters should not be compromised upon, and the retention of our nation’s independence is one of them.
If we want to keep Britain as an independent country, ruled by its own laws, free to make its own mistakes and to learn from them, able to govern itself in matters great and small, then the choice for us could not be clearer.
If we do not leave the EU on October 31, we need to ensure that the next General Election results in a strong pro-Brexit parliament, one that, without hesitation, will fulfil the expectations of the majority, and give its full support to our government as it takes us out of the European Union, lock, stock and barrel.
