Daily Mail

Brexit was a mistake... But Starmer trying to rejoin the EU would be a DISASTER!

Daily Mail logo Daily Mail 23.06.2023 03:24:08 A.N. Wilson for the Daily Mail
The Starmer camp has been ramping up its pro-European rhetoric

Seven years ago today we voted to leave the European Union. Seven years in which you might have hoped that the argument had been settled, and the result of the democratic process accepted. 

There's little prospect of that, to judge by the behaviour of Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer and his senior ministers.

As the Tories find themselves mired in economic gloom and the polls increasingly point to a Labour win - if not landslide - at the next election, the Starmer camp has been ramping up its pro-European rhetoric. 

Only this week, his Shadow Minister David Lammy told a conference of Remainers that 'reconnecting' with the European Union will be one of the party's top priorities if it wins power.

This was an echo of the moment last month that Starmer, in a speech to business leaders, promised to negotiate 'a closer trading relationship' with the EU.

Ministers were accused of dodging the opportunity to celebrate leaving the EU after no one from the Government appeared on a BBC Brexit special last night.

The Question Time episode, which marked the seventh anniversary of the EU referendum, had an audience made up entirely of Leave voters.

Former spin doctor Alastair Campbell, Labour peer Jenny Chapman, former MEP Ben Habib and academic Anand Menon all appeared in front of the Essex audience.

But no government minister appeared to defend Rishi Sunak's record.

Backbencher John Redwood was the sole Tory representative.

Last night No 10 said decisions on guests for political shows were a matter for the Conservative Party - which in turn said it wasn't their responsibility to put up ministers.

Mr Campbell, who is a vocal Remainer, wrote on Twitter that it was 'quite something' that no minister appeared.

Starmer insists that he respects the decision of the British people to leave Brussels behind, but we have to remember he is not the man of principle he would have us believe.

He not only campaigned for Jeremy Corbyn to be prime minister but also to overturn the Brexit vote in a second referendum. 

The indications are that he would like not just to build bridges with Europe - which might be a good thing - but to crawl penitently towards Brussels in the hope of eventually rejoining.

I voted to remain in the Brexit referendum, and yet I view the attitude of Starmer and the Labour Party with considerable alarm. 

While I thought Brexit was a mistake, I believe trying to undo it would be a complete disaster. 

The ugly divisions which we saw in the run-up to the Brexit vote would be opened up all over again if Keir Starmer's rumoured ideas are put into practice.

We just have to examine the facts and statistics of the vote to see the potential for strife.

There's no doubt that the Brexit referendum was the most decisive political event in the past 50 years. 

In the biggest mandate in British history, 17.4 million people voted out, and out we had to come.

But the referendum did not simply tell us about our relationship with Europe. It revealed the often painful lack of unity in our own country. 

For a start, the country was split down the middle - 52 per cent voted to leave, 48 per cent to remain. And then there were all sorts of other divisions within our United Kingdom.

In Scotland, for example, a whopping 62 per cent voted to remain. Brexit was a huge boost to the nationalists who said: 'Why should we Scots, a huge majority of whom wish to remain in the EU, be forced to leave by the Brexiteers of England?'

There was division among young and old: far more over-65s, voted Leave than Remain; among the under-30s, the great proportion voted Remain. 

Division, too, among the regions. The Cornish, whose fishermen got such a raw deal out of the Common Agricultural and Fisheries policies, voted in favour of leaving by a big majority. London, in contrast, was by a sizeable majority for Remain.

I love London and live in London, but Brexit was a wake-up call for us - we had little idea what people who are not the 'metropolitan elite' actually feel. 

There has been the most horrible feeling, since Brexit, of the Remainers sneering at the Brexiteers.

Many of them speak as if to have voted Brexit was racist, or stupid, or both. The liberal elite have treated the whole thing as a national disgrace, even though it is hard to see why a democratic process should be regarded as disgraceful.

Unless you think - as, of course, they do - that they should run the show regardless of what anyone actually votes.

Some of those I love most are Brexiteers, and they are afraid of saying so in many contexts, because to have voted Brexit implies you are not quite respectable. 

It is clear that many voted Brexit because they considered levels of immigration to Britain were unacceptably high.

The lofty Remainers considered such fears to be concealed racism, but it is legitimate to worry about this issue, even if so far no government has done much to address it. Immigration, legal and illegal, has gone up since Brexit.

If Keir Starmer and the Labour Party entered into an agreement with the EU to allow 'free movement of labour' again, some commentators would tell us that certain sectors of our economy would benefit - hospitality, fruit-picking, nursing and so on. 

But those who do not want free movement would be right to feel that their views, accepted by a democratic process, had been treated with utter contempt. Ignoring their views would surely be a recipe for anger and confrontation.

As I said at the beginning of this article, I voted Remain. I did not do so because I am a Euro-fanatic, though I am a sentimental European who delights in the fact that we share so many things, going back to the Roman Empire, with our friends in the other European countries - music, religion, learning, science among them.

I voted Remain largely because it seemed to me that there were distinct economic advantages in belonging to the EU and that, having negotiated ourselves into a position where we did not have to join the dreaded euro, Britain was actually in a really advantageous position vis-à-vis the rest of Europe.

If Keir Starmer and David Lammy began to negotiate our re-entry to Europe, I feel quite sure that one of the first requirements by Brussels would be that, this time, Britain would have to join the euro. 

To do so would be an economic disaster, and we have already had enough of those to last a generation.

The landslide victory of Boris Johnson was a demonstration of what the British people wanted from the man who had 'delivered Brexit'. They wanted it done, and they wanted it done decisively.

Circumstances and, alas, the incompetence of the governments of Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, have failed to give those voters what they quite legitimately expected.

Whatever happened to the idea that we might become a great independent powerhouse, a sort of Dubai on Thames or Singapore beyond the Channel?

How could the governments have allowed themselves to get entangled in the sheer nonsense of the 'protocol' over such esoteric questions of whether you can take a packet of sausages across the border into Northern Ireland?

I grew up in Stoke-on-Trent, one of the most fervent Brexiteer constituencies. So far, the things they voted for have not been delivered. 

Probably, at the next General Election, they will vote Labour again, and will have to watch Keir Starmer going cap in hand to Brussels begging to be forgiven for the sins of wanting the laws of Britain to be independent of an unelected Brussels, of wanting to limit immigration, of wanting their country back.

So far, I feel - from a purely economic point of view - that since 2016, I was right to have voted Remain. 

The export figures alone show that this country is far less prosperous than it was when it was part of the largest free trade area in the world.

But, Remainer as I was, I truly believe that if Keir Starmer went back to try to rejoin Europe it would be, as well as a total betrayal of those who voted Brexit, an advertisement of his abject cowardice. Britain would become a laughing stock in the eyes of the world.

We voted out and we must stay out, rather than spend long, dreary years renegotiating with those awful eurocrats who so enjoyed torturing Theresa May with their ludicrous, pettifogging demands.

What we are looking for is a leader who has the clarity of vision that appeared to motivate the Brexit campaign when it won in 2016. 

We want imagination and courage. We want major world trade deals which could not have been achieved inside the EU.

Boris Johnson proclaimed the day of the vote as Independence Day, but in fact there has not been a feeling of freedom since it happened. 

Only mutual distrust and recrimination. We should snap out of it, rediscover our sense of national unity and cry, in the words of that great European, Winston Churchill: 'Let us go forward together.'

vendredi 23 juin 2023 06:24:08 Categories: Daily Mail

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