Labour our ‘ keen to cosy up to a failing EU rather than a booming US’ (Image: Getty)
Five years ago, we formally left the EU, but what benefits has brought us? It’s a good question. Immigration – both legal and illegal – has surged and, despite a host of trade deals with the rest of the world, we haven’t exactly seen commodity prices come crashing down in low-growth Britain.
The latest figures from the ONS predict net immigration will be still running at 340,000 per year from 2029 onwards, continuing to put unsustainable pressure on our hospitals, schools and infrastructure.
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We always thought the enemy was without – Brussels bureaucrats – but it now appears the enemy of change was actually within, in successive foot-dragging governments that and followed their own agenda.
“Our hands are tied” has become the mantra of civil servants and politicians wanting to blame circumstances beyond their control for their own lack of power.
For decades they happily pointed to EU directives, but then in 2016 came the horrible realisation they’d have to account for their own failures. And since then they’ve been busily reassembling new laws hindering our progress.
Chief among these was Theresa May’s legally binding net zero legislation in 2019, condemning us to years of de-industrialisation, job losses and some of the highest energy prices in the world.
On top of that came the deification of the , as a catch-all excuse for our inability to deport illegal migrants. Left-leaning politicians of all stripes, included, have used such self-imposed shackles to undermine any attempt to ‘Take Back Control’.
Whatever happened to us becoming Singapore-on-Thames, cutting business regulations and taxes to make us more competitive with the rest of the world?
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When tried to finally ram this through, she was toppled by her own party and the markets. But the truth is, the very party that gave us the opportunity to vote Leave has done its very best ever since to undermine the potential benefits.
There was a golden moment when it looked as though it might actually happen.
“Now for the Roaring Twenties” was the headline in the Sunday Express in December 2019 when had won his landslide election and President Trump looked set for a second term.
The biggest prize then, of course, was a US trade deal and Trump was keen for it, but ludicrous scare stories of imported chlorinated chicken had already been used to undermine Theresa May’s interest in this pact and, by the end of 2020, Trump was out of power.
came too, knocking our economies for six and triggering a damaging bout of inflation. Now but Labour is in power and, being the Remainer party, are keen to cosy up to a failing EU rather than a booming US.
Since our departure, the EU has overseen the decline of the once mighty German car industry, uncontrolled mass migration, rocketing energy prices, low growth and high public debt. Its own voters are so fed-up that they are favouring anti-establishment, far-right parties.
It has little to teach us and yet is still keen to tie us into the Pan Euro Mediterranean Convention. It seems inconceivable such a union would happen without imposing conditions on us limiting our freedoms.
Civil servants throughout Westminster would be cheering to the rafters as, once again, their hands would be tied by a supra-national institution that limits our ability to forge our own future.
Since was prime minister, left-leaning politicians have embraced a rules-based world order in which international judges and lawyers, not our elected MPs, are the arbiters of what we can and cannot do. The EU was the cheerleader for that.
The one time voters were allowed to stand-up to a declinist establishment and dare to dream of making Britain great again, we have been consistently denied the fruits of our rebellion.
The only hope for us now is that Trump’s capitalist renaissance is such a success that it cannot be ignored by our foot-draggers and may even inspire the breakthrough of the Reform party, true believers in and its opportunities.
Only then would the freedom we dared to vote for in 2016 and 2019 deliver the high-growth, enterprising nation we once were and could be again.