Brexit’s Progress

pexels-photo-241872

Brexit’s Progress

Stephen MacLean perceives the ‘End of the Beginning’

‘MPs hand Theresa May the starting gun on Brexit’. That is how the Independent recorded last Wednesday’s ‘second reading’ in the UK House of Commons to permit the Conservative government to begin exiting the European Union. And what a process it has been.

Many will argue that Brexit has been in the works since September 1988, when then prime minister Margaret Thatcher argued that ‘We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.’

This became known as her ‘Bruges speech’, and inspired countless Britons to struggle for UK sovereignty against Continental encroachments. An eponymous ‘Bruges Group’, with Lady Thatcher as its founding president, was formed the next year to continue the fight.

Unrest smoldered under successive Labour governments, culminating in widespread disgust at the passing of the Lisbon Treaty — the compromise alternative when a formal agreement failed to receive sufficient votes from member states to pass, and for critics a ‘constitution’ in all-but-name for a federal Europe.

Attempting to quell dissent among his Eurosceptic MPs, coalition prime minister David Cameron promised an ‘in/out referendum’ early in 2013 and, in February last year, called for a June 23rd vote — which ‘Leave’ campaigner Boris Johnson called Britain’s own ‘Independence Day’.

Mr. Cameron, who resigned after leading the unsuccessful Remain camp, was succeeded by Theresa May, who vowed to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and initiate talks to pull Britain out of the EU.

But not so fast. Or ‘festina lente’, as the Romans used to say.

Brexit opponents argued in October that the Government could not take unilateral action without an authorising vote in Parliament. The High Court concurred and Mrs May appealed to the Supreme Court in December, which ruled two weeks ago that the referendum results were not sufficient legal grounds for the Government to act alone. In subsequent days the Government introduced legislation to remedy its oversight and last week the bill’s first major hurdle was passed, with the House of Commons voting 498 to 114 on second reading to ratify the Brexit results.

Next the ‘European Union (Notification of Withdrawal)’ bill undergoes line-by-line scrutiny in ‘Committee of the Whole’ where it may be amended. Sent back to the Commons, at this ‘report stage’ it will face further amendment from MPs before a final ‘third reading’; if passed by a majority, the bill is subjected to a similar step-by-step procedure in the House of Lords; if peers pass additional changes to the legislation, it must return to the Commons in a ‘ping-pong’ exercise until a ‘finished’ bill is agreed by both Houses — at last, to be presented to Her Majesty for Royal Assent. And all this, the Prime Minister hopes, before her self-imposed end-of-March deadline to set in motion Article 50.

Brexiteers discouraged by these seemingly interminable obstacles to independence can take heart from their heroic leader during World War II. After endless setbacks in its fight against Nazi Germany — the loss of continental Europe, the flight from Dunkirk, the London blitz — British forces triumphed over ‘Desert Fox’ General Erwin Rommel at the ‘Battle of Egypt’ in November 1942.

The war was far from over but, for Sir Winston Churchill, the victory achieved at El Alamein marked the turning point for future Allied success. Likewise, after numerous setbacks following the June referendum, this initial Brexit legislation’s easy passage through the Commons may signal that its tide has turned, and reclaiming British sovereignty well in sight.

‘Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end,’ Sir Winston told an expectant Mansion House luncheon. ‘But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’

Montgomery at El Alamein

Bernard Montgomery at El Alamein

Stephen Michael MacLean maintains the weblog The Organic Tory

This entry was posted in Current Affairs and Comment, QR Home and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

16 Responses to Brexit’s Progress

  1. Stuart Millson says:

    I certainly feel that Gina Miller’s legal action (which, as a Telegraph report informed us, was really the work of a group of wealthy offshore-based Remainers) backfired somewhat. The idea was that a largely pro-Remain House of Commons would dilute and obstruct our withdrawal from the EU – but the fact is, no self-respecting politician (and for once, Labour was in the world of reality) would ever try to obstruct a 17.5 million-strong referendum result. And so the Bill was voted through, unamended – the much-anticipated, multiple alterations from Tim Farron, the Scots separatists et al came to nothing. The Remainders also believed that there was a chance that the devolved national assemblies would also offer some sort of obstacle, but again, the Supreme Court ruled that Edinburgh had no say in, what is now, a foreign relations matter.

    It was also interesting that three of the Supreme Court judges dissented from the majority decision – so three of our leading legal authorities did believe that HM Government had the right to implement the referendum result without parliamentary approval. (We must never forget that Parliament devolved the decision on EU membership to the British voters – and thus, the issue really should have gone back to the Executive rather than to the Commons and the Lords.) Thank goodness, at last, we are in sight of Theresa May tearing up the membership card to a club that costs us an estimated £10 billion a year.

  2. David Ashton says:

    John Locke pointed out that a Sovereign ceases ipso facto to be a Sovereign if he puts himself in the hands another without securing first the voluntary consent of his subject people. Ditto, Parliament.

  3. Stuart Millson says:

    Charles Moore argues in the Telegraph today that the PM does not really understand the meaning of the free-market economy – but I wonder if anyone on the Tory side really understands that most people in Britain are not really interested at all in this concept. When she became Prime Minister, Mrs. May appealed directly to the British people – understanding that they were concerned by their living standards and mortgage worries (or rent worries), rather than economic principles of free-market ideology. She seemed to aim at a sort of “economic equilibrium” for society, based upon the social conservatism of a different era – instead of a message that would appeal to fund managers, bank managers and company directors. Despite striking out in the right direction, she seems to have lost the common touch – disastrously responding to far-Left Labour resurgence by – of all things – celebrating the independence of the Bank of England – a matter of supreme irrelevance to all the tens of thousands in Doncaster, South Wales and Sunderland who voted in the June of 2016 to regain their country. Countering the supposed Socialist surge in Brighton last week is better done by standing up for people in Port Talbot – not defending the Bank of England!

  4. Stuart Millson says:

    If I were the new UKIP leader, I would stage a mass-resignation from the EU Parliament of all my MEPs. This (a) would upstage Barnier, (b) offer a tangible sign to the British people that “Leave means leave”, and (c) show that the country’s leading anti-EU party is providing serious leadership and principle still in the Brexit process. It is quite wrong that MEPs are still taking part in this system – and worse that UKIP of all people have not yet shown the way.

    Meanwhile, while David Davis is negotiating in the EU citadel, HM Government could get on with a few measures which will hearten the people and show that progress is being made – namely, restore the traditional UK passport (removing ‘European Union’ from the document) and delete the Euro-flag (symbol of the EU occupation government) from driving licences and car registration number plates. This would, at least, be a start.

  5. David Ashton says:

    The PM is still too robotic and also dependent on several daily insulin injections. We are stuck with “free movement” and foreign legislation for longer than ever, whatever Bojo and Mogg say or do about Brexit.

    Meanwhile, our industrial and royal navy assets are being sold off to NON/EXTRA-European financiers and government. We may eventually be left merely with the husk of national sovereignty.

    The elephant in the room is the room is the forthcoming demographic change in England and the USA to an Afro-Asian majority. The New Left “equality and diversity” agenda is being implemented by the “Tories”, helpfully clearing the ground for the final “class-struggle” putsch by Corbyn-McDonnell-McCluskey.

    Quite apart from an international banking crisis, the decisive election issues will be the need for more nurses, doctors, teachers and police, and housing.

  6. Stuart Millson says:

    The Times helpfully reports on its front page this morning that Brussels is preparing for the possibility of the “fall” of Theresa May’s Government. Let’s hope that Mrs. May’s famed “bloody difficult woman” character kicks in: we can’t have the elected British Government undermined by those unelected automata in Brussels.

  7. Stuart Millson says:

    Astonishing that someone called Lord Kerr (who he?) can pop up and tell the elected House of Commons and the British people, after their 17.5 million-strong Brexit vote, that his own Article 50 rules are purely arbitrary! Typical of the EU and the Eurocrats: a hall of mirrors, shifting sands, denial of democracy and reality, contempt for Parliament and the people.

    Perhaps we should just declare UDI and have done with this Article 50 tedium? Despite what the Lord Kerrs of this world think, we are a sovereign nation. And we remember this fact on Sunday at 11am: the sacrifice of generations, which saved our Realm – and restored freedom to the defeated nations of occupied Europe.

  8. Stuart Millson says:

    A day of great news and drama – the fall of Marxist dictator, Mugabe; the failure of Angela Merkel to form a government in Germany; the probability that we will have to pay £40 billion to the European Union just for the privilege of leaving it… Money that could be spent in the United Kingdom on: improving hospital equipment, cutting waiting times, speeding up operations for people who are desperate, running more ambulances, building more educational facilities, helping to subsidise innovation and scientific development, supporting manufacturing – and promoting overseas trade, building and introducing better trains and rail connections, giving more money to young musicians and the arts, funding our Armed Forces and defence, helping community centres and abolishing food-banks – i.e. giving decent facilities and food to the poor and homeless… The list is endless.

  9. Stuart Millson says:

    It seems that we have failed to “meet” another EU-imposed “deadline”. The time has come for the Government to say that we have given enough – both time and money. It also seems outrageous that the Government of the Republic of Ireland (which would soon feel discomfort without its trade with the UK) can make the sort of demands it is currently making. Time for some tough talking now – a bit of Margaret Thatcher’s “No! No! No!”

  10. Stuart Millson says:

    More excruciatingly grudging commentary from Radio 4’s Today programme this week about Brexit’s progress (the licence-fee-funded broadcasters are trying every day to sour opinion against our new-found freedom) – in fact it was even more grudging and cynical than MY last comment on this thread! Well, I am glad that the Prime Minister worked into the early hours to secure an agreement with the EU – how nice of them to accept it all (and our billions of pounds in the “divorce settlement”).

    It is now being said that we should drop the term, Brexit and introduce a new word to describe the political and economic re-positioning of our island: Brentrance. A good idea. Brentrance: our reconnection with the rest of the world, our escape from “President” Tusk and his bureaucrats’ archipelago, his Kremlin in Brussels.

    Just in passing – a friend of mine was driving through a gridlocked Parliament Square last week and reported seeing a camp of Euro-flag-flying hippies and dreary “activists” on the grass just opposite Parliament (and under the glare of Sir Winston Churchill). My contact observed how like the Greenham Common “peace camp” it seemed: a desperate and vocal minority, out of step with their own country and seemingly to prefer other systems of government and ways to those of our island home.

  11. Stuart Millson says:

    A pity that Grieve, Soubry and their band of nitpickers decided to have their little say last night in the Commons. I wonder what makes them think that they have the right to place further impediments in the way of Brexit – what makes them think that they are better or more important than the 17.5 million ordinary British people who voted to free their country from the EU occupation government? (And don’t forget, that Parliament itself voted to devolve the decision on EU membership to us, in our referendum.)

    I can scarcely believe the rationale behind Grieve’s defence of what he did. He claims to be standing up for some great principle of constitutional propriety – and yet seems to have been quite happy to see the British constitution and Parliament circumvented and supplanted by the EU for all these years.

    I read reports that when the vote was announced, Remainiac Labour MPs were punching the air. For these people, their bizarre love of the European Union overrides any loyalty to Britain – not that they had any loyalty to it in the first place, of course.

  12. Stuart Millson says:

    Delighted that the true-blue British passport is coming back – at last a visible sign (to ordinary people) of a real Brexit. Glad that we’re going 40 years back in time (not 100 as various Remainiacs/Remainders are sneering) to the time when we could issue our own passports and run our own country. (Ted Heath’s ‘Common Market’ entry has a lot to answer for…)

    Enjoyed sniggering at David Marquand’s recent Guardian piece, all about how terrible England is; how we all defer to the monarchy (we don’t – we’ve actually all been deferring to Leftists like Marquand for far too long!); how we need Milton back (in my view, Milton and his crusade of liberty would make him, today, a Brexiteer); and how “two nations of the UK do not want Brexit” (ignoring the fact that we all voted as one country on this – the vote was not structured as a region-by-region affair).

    Thank heavens we go into 2018 – a year and three months before our Lisbon Treaty leave date – gradually regaining all the things we have lost – our sovereignty, our liberties, our passports. (I’m a Regainer!) We are saying a long goodbye to the EU occupation government, but it is a goodbye nevertheless. I sense that most quiet, even-handed Remainers (as opposed to the diehard Remoonies) just want to achieve a decent settlement and to go forward. And I must say, I don’t even mind if we compromise here and there a little with Tusk, Juncker and co. It must (in the real world) be the devil a job extricating our way out of the 40-year EU labyrinth – and although I would prefer a cleaner break, well done to David Davis and his negotiators for doing their best on our behalf.

    I hope that other proud and free European electorates will see the advantage of being a free nation once again, and will vote to leave the centralist EU. Then we can have what the Common Market/EEC/EU should have been all along: a community of “the old and famous states of Europe” (Churchill).

  13. David Ashton says:

    Heseltine wants Corbyn as PM. Soubry wants Maximum Immigration. May wants…a female James Bond.

    Will we end up with the worst of all worlds: restricted access to the nearest huge regional market and supply, but no control of inward settlement and continued legal control from “Europe”?

    What is needed is European unity against internal and external enemies. A few planes on the aircraft carriers; warships to protect sea lanes and cyber cables; elite soldiers who have a badge indicating traditional loyalty to the Monarch; closure of sharia colonies plus inducements for hijra; regaining control of power-sources and infrastructure from Chinese, Arabs and Russians; an English education system in England, which also recognizes our debt to French, German, Roman and Greek culture rather than “garage, grime, slime, hip, hop, skip, jump, rock, rap and rape”.

  14. Stuart Millson says:

    Could anyone tell me what Nick Clegg has done to deserve a knighthood? As far as I can recall, all he did was help to saddle students with massive debts and play second fiddle to the vacuous David Cameron. I sense that Clegg had ambitions to be one of our EU Commissioners, but now that this avenue is about to be closed, I suppose he will have to be content with his boring, plain-old British knighthood. Maybe, some years from now, he could meet ‘Lord’ Heseltine to discuss the political past? They could both complain to each other about the huge taxes which the Marxist Government under Jeremy Corbyn has extracted from them. “If only we had stuck with Theresa,” lamented Lord Michael. “If only I had stuck with Dave,” replied Sir Nick.

  15. Stuart Millson says:

    At last, after three years of political trench warfare (and every tedious delaying tactic invented by the Remainiac rump) our country will, on Friday, return to being what is has always been: a sovereign country. (As Prof. Alan Sked commented during the referendum campaign: “It is normal for a nation to govern itself.”)

    The new 50 pence coin, which is due to go into circulation on Friday – Brexit Day – will be minted with the message: ‘Peace, prosperity and friendship to all nations.” Such a phrase truly honours the Brexit ideal which Theresa May put forward during her premiership, in what was a brave attempt to balance (a) the two conflicting sides in the referendum campaign, and (b) show how Brexit is not “inward-looking” but instead, the reflection of England’s and Britain’s maritime and global role – reaching out to the Commonwealth and the U.S. – not just the nations of the continent!

    I believe that the Brexit settlement, now sealed by Boris Johnson, allows us to leave the political institutions of the EU, but to remain in some form of useful, practical commercial and cultural co-habitation with our partners across the Channel. We do not have to belong to a corporate bureaucracy based in the Belgian capital in order to be true Europeans.

  16. David Ashton says:

    Bojo – Mojo or No-Go?
    After Brexit, what next?
    A Sovereign Nation supported by its People, would
    1. Resist Huawei
    2. Reject HS2
    3. Repeal the Equality Act
    4. Restore Freedom of Speech & Association
    5. Revive Englishness for England
    NOTE to readers: my URL had to be changed, losing irrecoverably all inbox messages sent before 27 January 2002

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.