The Euro FifthColumn

Carleton Martello Tower

The Euro Fifth Column

By Stuart Millson

With five months to go before our country disengages from the EU, a millionaire-funded, pro-Brussels movement is obstructing the democratic Brexit process.

With the ratification of the EU Withdrawal Act by Parliament earlier this year, Britain is now on course to leave the European Union at the end of March 2019 – a sea-change in modern political history brought about by the 17.4 million-strong Leave vote at the June 2016 referendum. And yet, despite Parliament originally devolving the decision on EU membership to the electorate, the Brexit process appears – to most everyday observers – a tedious stalemate: an endless to-and-fro exchange between the elected British Government, and the unelected leaders of the European Union on matters such as customs arrangements and the future of the Irish “soft” border; persistent calls from the defeated Remain side for a second referendum (variously) on the final Brexit deal or a complete re-run of June 2016; and the sympathetic parading on TV of the extraordinarily well-funded leaders of the anti-Brexit side.

Their Euro-banners flying at street demonstrations, and their spokespeople crowding the airwaves with the mantra that the people “didn’t know what they were voting for” or that post-Brexit Britain is heading for economic oblivion, the Remainers have emerged as a dedicated political “fifth-column” standing for the interests of the European superstate. And yet this group, despite its puffed-up prominence across the TV and social media, constitutes but a tiny minority of opinion: their many thousands of marchers a mere drop in the ocean when matched against the 17.4 million Britons who backed Brexit. The vocal and numerical strength of this cultish, EU-loving army exists only in the Remainiac headquarters of Britain: metropolitan London – our latte-drinking, left-leaning capital city, now so combustible, feverish and politically uncontrollable that it is impossible for the current President of the United States to set foot in it. A shocking reality – yet also an encouraging sign that the anti-Brexit, anti-Trump lobby is very much the desperate group, shouting in the street – and now strongly separated from the corridors of power, and the tide of history.

The huffing-and-puffing Remainiacs, though driven and energetic, have also been a little unreliable in their position. Following the referendum, they claimed that it was how we left the European Union that mattered (i.e. that procedurally, only Parliament could authorise the Government on invoking the Lisbon Treaty clause, through which a state exits the EU). Now that Parliament has provided both Article 50 authorisation and a ratification for Britain’s departure, Remain now seeks – lo and behold – a second referendum, claiming that we and not MPs and Lords need to vote again on the terms of the final outcome. The disingenuous title of the Remainers’ latest initiative – “the People’s Vote” (as if the people have so far been denied a say!) suggests a conscientious, principled defence of democracy. Its aim, however, to replay the 2016 referendum, and no doubt capitalise on the fact that many Leave and Remain voters alike might not approve of every point of the Government’s final negotiation, is a transparent attempt to halt Brexit.

The possibility that the Government and the EU may not even come to a final deal is also a factor in the plans of the Remainers – as a question to voters, such as “should we leave with or without a deal” might enable the pro-EU side – potentially – to call into question, stall, or even overturn the 2016 referendum entirely. However, as was seen at their march in London on Saturday 20thOctober, the issue is not really about the terms of our leaving: instead, it is a political civil war against Brexit in its entirety. The proliferation of banners – ‘Stop Brexit’ and even, ‘Tories against Brexit’ – spoke volumes about the real aim of this militant faction which clearly holds the 2016 referendum result in contempt, and believes it has the right to force its way, no matter what the great mass of people decided.

There were, of course, millions of Remain voters who had completely understandable and noble reasons for wanting Britain to stay part of the EU: many felt that we needed to stay for established trade and commercial reasons; some felt that the EU – like the UN – was at least a symbolic force for good international relations, and so forth. It was also by no means the case that everyone who voted to stay was a Euro-enthusiast: many Eurosceptics, echoing William Hague’s old slogan – In Europe, not run by Europe – felt it might be better to stay in the club and fight for British national interests and certain “red lines” or reforms. However, most of those who voted for continued European affiliation now clearly (or, perhaps, grudgingly) accept the Leave result and feel that the Government must be allowed simply to “get on with it”. After all – following the 1975 referendum on continued Common Market membership, there was no “second vote” on the exact terms by which we stayed.

The Remainiac, rear guard action against Brexit reveals much about this pro-Brussels group and the sort of people within it. Run by a millionaire clique that believes life is run on its terms, and which only has to sign a cheque or “move money” in order to get its own way, the pro-EU side exhibits a worrying sense of entitlement, self-righteousness and dogma. But its foot-soldiers, if indeed one can dignify this noisy metropolitan mass with the term, soldier, have shown us a curious streak of emotional obsession: a love for “Europe” that outweighs any loyalty to Britain – as if Britain on its own is somehow not good enough for them. Just after the 2016 referendum, another Remainiac march through Parliament Square saw one pitiful individual carrying a poster, the slogan of which read: ‘Can’t live without the European Union’. That the EU – with its grim, unelected leaders, its gravy-trains, fishing quotas, financial waste and bureaucratic waffle – should mean so much to anyone is beyond belief.

Thank goodness that the end is in sight.

Stuart Millson is QR’s Classical Music Editor

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14 Responses to The Euro FifthColumn

  1. David Ashton says:

    What “end” is in sight? Britain today was well described by Peter Hitchens in “Mail on Sunday” 27 October (q.v.) – a sinking ship, inside or outside the EEEYOO. In, out, splash it all about, do the fudge & fakey, turn left round, that’s what it’s all about.

    A “country” ruled by others, owned by others, and repopulated by others – the End is indeed in sight, if we let it.

  2. Thomas Moon says:

    I’m not sure we can blame or criticise the remainers for trying to reverse the result of the Brexit vote; if it had gone the other way (and, let’s not forget, many of us didn’t think the Leave vote had any chance at all), I would certainly have continued to support any campaign for Britain to leave this monstrous, satanic abomination, as I have from the day we were taken into it by that traitorous slug Heath.

    Will they get their way? In all but name. Mrs May and the Tories will not extricate us from the EU because they don’t want to. They have no love for Britain and a hatred of the nation state just as great as the globalists of Labour. Until we get a decent, patriotic, radical party in government, it will be business as usual, even if, nominally, we have left the EU.

  3. Stuart Millson says:

    If our side had lost the referendum, I seriously doubt that we would be spending all our time calling for an immediate second vote. In any case, the Remainers would simply laugh at us and say that “the result stands”/that disgruntled Leavers “can’t accept democracy” etc.

    Many “concerned” expressions yesterday on the pro-Remain TV channels’ news bulletins over the big story that one of our leading Leave campaigners allegedly overspent on the 2016 referendum/took various “impermissible” donations. I wonder if anyone in the Electoral Commission or the BBC newsroom remembers – or cares – how the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, authorised the staggering spending of £9 million of taxpayers’ money on a pro-Remain leaflet, send to every household in the land?

  4. David Ashton says:

    The Referendum campaign on both sides descended to the occasion, just like the usual “election” racket. May is a feminist Cameron with extra-PC knobs on. The basic problem is the political “elite” running England and Europe into the ground. What if in a generation or two Red China is battling with the Green Caliphate to inherit the ruins – from Belfast to Berlin?

  5. Stuart Millson says:

    Interesting item on the Russia Today news this evening. According to the European Union, Britain (as well as Italy – another country not best liked by the EU Commission) is on course for the lowest economic growth across Europe. Top for growth are… Malta and Ireland!

  6. Stuart Millson says:

    The Opposition politburo looked rather grim and annoyed after last night’s no-confidence vote backfired. But I wonder if the Labour leadership is making a grave tactical error by trying to frustrate the Government’s exit strategy? They seem to forget that millions of their voters – in Doncaster, Derby, Stoke, the old South Wales industrial heartland – voted for Brexit in the 2016 referendum. Too often we hear John McDonnell telling us what the Labour MEMBERSHIP thinks or says – or what his conference agreed – but these people (ideological, London-based or Londonish in their outlook) are far removed from the true Labour folk in the faraway towns. By holding up Brexit, Labour’s elite is playing to its leftist element, but alienating the people who really matter in a General Election: the everyday, socially-conservative, essentially patriotic people in the machine-shop, factory, or lorry cab.

  7. David Ashton says:

    The “far” left have mostly been against the EU all along.

    What is needed is a coalition of sovereign EUROPEAN nations including those in the British Isles to defend the shared civilization against Islamist invasion, Chinese imperialism and African overpopulation, Brexit or No Brexit.

  8. Stuart Millson says:

    Radio 4’s PM programme (the self-styled impartial flagship of news broadcasting) opened this evening with a recording of Remainiac demonstrators outside Parliament, chanting “Bye, bye, bye, Theresa…” The BBC isn’t at all biased, of course…

  9. David Ashton says:

    Things fall apart….every few minutes.

    But at midnight on 13 March 2019 I ask that if Parliament votes against leaving the EU on the date previously stated in legislation, without a deal or with no deal, then surely the situation reverts in domestic and international law to the status quo i.e. Remain no change. Is this correct, or not?

  10. Stuart Millson says:

    One thing that the bickering, self-indulgent “tribes” at Westminster may not have realised: the EU may not want to offer us an extension. After all, Juncker and Tusk were adamant that there could be no change to the negotiated Withdrawal Agreement – so why would they agree to an Article 50 extension? We shall see…

    Parliament can really discuss as many motions as it likes, but the fact remains that they’d have to amend last summer’s Withdrawal Act for the date to change. At present, we’re still on for the 29th March.

    Very amusing interview on Sky last night with Anna Soubry. She accused the Prime Minister of “not listening”, of having “tin ears”. This is criticism indeed from someone who has removed from her entire sound and vision the result of the 2016 referendum (the true “people’s vote”), and the views of the British people. It was also – not exactly amusing, but bizarre – to see the Brexit purists voting in the same way as the second referendum brigade, the unreconciled Remainers, the Labour Left, LibDems (bar one) and SNP.

    Never has there been such a disconnection between the Remainer Parliament – and the people.

  11. David Ashton says:

    I have always tried to eliminate personal dislike from calm political analysis, but Anna Soubry, who joined our ultra-PC local MP Norman Lamb in explicitly pushing for more and more immigration, is making my effort in just this one case very difficult.

    I watched one of the ERG people on TV next day who suggested that trouble could have been avoided if negotiations had started with Donald Tusk’s European Free Trade offer. Repeated last October, does this mammoth proposal still have any teeth?

    The parties are clusters of policy-wonk careerists that depend on financial backers i.e. payola. This was true even in the days of Belloc and was shown again in the days of Blair.

    I would suggest a new parliamentary system based on adult (18+) suffrage, excluding convicts and foreigners, within an occupational franchise for a lower executive chamber, plus a senate drawn from truly eminent people (Royal Society, Armed Forces, University scientists, Judiciary &c) as a revisory and new-ideas chamber, while keeping local government local. Frequent free elections and free speech all round. However, the only financial backing I can muster is from my own meagre pension pot.

    Have you watched that delicious moment in Mike Bartlett’s “King Charles III” when he enters the “people’s chamber” and scatters the rabble? If only….

  12. Stuart Millson says:

    Most amused by the TV media over the last 48 hours, constantly asking: “What WILL life be like outside the European Union?” – the tone of the question suggesting that we’ve always been part of this wondrous system. I wonder if the Euro-centric TV clones have realised that Britain was for hundreds of years, a successful self-governing realm, with its own world-market, long before the inward-looking ‘Common Market’ (with its closed-off trading area) was ever thought of?

    Also witnessed on Sky News (might as well call it the EU Broadcasting Division) a report from the Irish border, where anti-Unionists have painted a gigantic sign, which reads: ‘United Ireland, the answer to Brexit.’ I would suggest another way: the Republic of Ireland renounces the EU, declares independence from the dead hand of Brussels, revives the Irish ‘punt’ and joins the sterling zone. So – no border on the island of Ireland, and no border on the Irish sea. Needless to say, this alternative view was not provided.

  13. Paul Francis Leighton FCIJ says:

    As an Anglo-Irishman with centuries of Mayo blood in my veins, I have to say that Stuart Millson’s solution to the Irish border problem has the great merit of making economic and cultural sense. In every respect, the Irish Republic – another ‘island nation’ – is infinitely more culturally in-tune with the UK than with the Commission’s bureaucratic construct of a ‘united’ Europe. True, the Republic had some early short-term benefits from joining the EEC – including extra money for major road and rail projects, but that was when Ireland was a net-recipient of Commission funds, Now it is a net contributor and paying higher prices for everything since it abandoned the ‘punt’ and embraced the Euro. Unquestionably, now, it would be better off in the sterling area.

    It is also worth bearing in mind that when the Celtic Tiger burnt-out economically and then – Taoiseach – Brian Cowan went cap-in-hand to “Europe” for a financial bail-out, the interest rate that the Republic was required to pay for it’s financial lifeline was even greater than that, later, wrung out of Greece in similar circumstances. More recently, the European Commission sought to ‘weaponise’ (sic) the Irish Republic and the border issue as a stick with which to beat the UK in Brexit negotiations. Relations between the Republic and the UK would have been far more harmonious without the Commission’s machinations, or, for that matter, the prejudiced commentary of some of my erstwhile ‘colleagues’ in broadcasting

  14. Stuart Millson says:

    Thank you for your comments, Paul.

    I was surprised to hear President-Elect Biden this evening, making (what seemed) quite a dig against Britain. Condemning the disturbances in Washington (the actions of Trump supporters, yesterday, rather than the rioting of the far-Left last summer), Mr. Biden said of the US national assembly: “We don’t have kings, or a House of Lords.” (The inescapable meaning – we’re not feudal like you in the UK and have true democracy!)

    It seems that there is much ignorance about Britain in US political circles, starting at the very top. Our monarch is a figurehead, not an executive ruler (like the occupant of the White House) and the House of Lords – like the US Senate – is an Upper Chamber, dedicated to a deep examination of legislation. But whereas the US Upper Chamber can hold up or cancel such legislation, our House of Lords cannot; serving, instead, as a forum in which bills are tested and examined.

    It seems to me that our old-fashioned democracy is actually much better than many of its more “up to date” imitators.

    Mr. Biden also needs to be a little more relaxed and realistic about the issue of the post-Brexit Irish border. Does he really believe that even if we had someone at that border with a clipboard checking the contents of lorries, the island of Ireland would descend into chaos – or that The Troubles would begin all over again after more than 20 years of the peace settlement?

    We respect US sovereignty – the new US President should respect ours.

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