Ten years after Brexit, it’s time to seize its opportunities (original) (raw)

The European Partnership Bill would fast-track EU rules into UK law - ANDY RAIN/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

This month marks the 10-year anniversary of Brexit, the day Britain voted to reassert itself as a sovereign nation. The biggest democratic event in our history should be a cause for celebration. But the Government appears intent on reversing this result by stealth, on the misguided pretext that this is what the British people now want.

Britain has not yet made much of its Brexit opportunities. Given the freedom to chart our own course, too often we have chosen to tie ourselves to the EU's slowly sinking ship.

Instead, Brexit has been used as a scapegoat for all the failings of our own governing class. Economic malaise, political upheaval, social fracturing – all have been pinned on a decision taken a decade ago, despite the fact that EU countries are experiencing exactly the same problems.

Yet, in the past year, Sir Keir Starmer has dramatically increased Britain's alignment with the EU, stymieing our ability to innovate, and imposing burdensome regulations on British business. Things are set to get worse.

The European Partnership Bill will effectively begin the process of rejoining. It would fast-track EU rules into UK law, using so-called Henry VIII powers to bypass proper parliamentary scrutiny.

Sir Keir seems to think he can get away with this because a superficial reading of polling might suggest there is now a majority for rejoining the EU.

But such polls rarely take account of the fact that rejoining would mean the UK becoming a rule-taker. Nor the obvious costs the EU would extract from the UK in exchange. Ask people whether they would want to sacrifice the pound, or choose to pay vast sums to a bloated bureaucracy without a rebate, and the polling would be quite different.

This is why it is welcome that Britain Unbound, a new, non-partisan campaign group for a sovereign UK, has done just that. The group, which includes Labour figures Lord Glasman and Dr Richard Johnson, commissioned a YouGov poll which found that only 27 per cent of people would be willing to trade less power over rules and laws that apply in the UK for greater access to the EU Single Market.

That is a massive repudiation of the Government's current policy, and a clear warning to those who would have us rejoin the sclerotic bloc. It is time the Government finally grasped the opportunities the British people afforded it 10 years ago.