Shropshire Star

Brexit vote - two years on: 'We have wasted a strong position'

Former Ludlow MP Christopher Gill has been a passionate Brexit campaigner.

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Christopher Gill

Ever been had? Together with 17,410,741 other people I voted to leave the European Union. In all, 16,141,241 voted to Remain.

Nobody voted for something in between – but that is what the clever-clogs in the establishment are hell-bent on achieving.

They have taken the diabolical liberty of interpreting a majority vote to Leave as a mandate to keep one foot in the EU door!

On June 24 2016 Britain had a strong hand to play. As a lucrative market for continental goods, as a vital component of European defence and intelligence capabilities, as a world centre for financial services and not least as a major net contributor to EU coffers we could have simply told Brussels that we were leaving the EU and all its institutions but that if they wished to continue trading with us on tariff-free terms that would be alright by us!

The answer, which we could have required of them by say the end of 2016, would almost certainly have been ‘no’ because the EU couldn’t possibly have acceded to such a request without risking other member states demanding the same, any more than the EU can now give us the preferential terms we seek without compromising its own fundamental principles of free movement of goods, capital, services and people

But at least, had we acted decisively on Day 1, we would have known where we stood and instead of frittering away the past 18 months negotiating with a hidebound hegemony we could have put all our energies into negotiating a Free Trade Agreement (FTA)

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What an opportunity missed – to have gone flat-out for free trade at precisely the time that the threat of protectionism looms so very large and free trade so desperately needs a credible world champion. It’s not rocket science to work out that if the USA goes down the road to protectionism then other countries will be more than a little tempted, if not positively obliged, to do the same. The troubles that Theresa May and her Government are currently experiencing are entirely of her own making.

The impression that she is a half-hearted Leaver is widespread and little wonder given the delay in invoking Article 50 in the first place and the lack of positive progress that has followed.

Up until this point the people have given Theresa May the benefit of the doubt.

At first take it looked reasonable that Britain should negotiate Brexit – in fact the European treaties specify that an EU leaving member state must negotiate the terms of its leaving. But just look at what is happening.

A basically pro-EU Prime Minister, pressurised by all the Remainers in her Cabinet, in both Houses of Parliament, in the civil service, in big business and not forgetting, of course, in the pro-Brussels Broadcasting Corporation isn’t just negotiating the terms of our leaving but using these negotiations to keep us locked into as many aspects of European union as they can get away with.

The prospect facing the UK is that when all is said and done we will be out of the benighted EU at the end of next March but still subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, still subject to the Common Fisheries Policy, still subject to uncontrolled immigration and still paying an extortionate membership fee to a club we no longer wish to belong to and, let it not be forgotten, without any vote in what goes on!

‘No deal is better than a bad deal’ says the Prime Minister – she’d better believe it, otherwise the consequences for both she and the Conservative Party will be truly awesome. She and they may think that the British people would never be so stupid as to vote for Mr Corbyn’s Labour Party but need to realise that if the electorate are put off voting for the Right, the Left will triumph, simply by default.