Disclaimer: The views expressed within this article are entirely the author’s own and are not attributable to Wessex Scene as a whole.
Three years of legal wrangling, parliamentary posturing, and rank snobbery from the metropolitan elites come to an end today.
Boris Johnson will later today, against all odds, succeed in getting Brexit done.
Most Brexiteers, myself included, thought this day would never come. Remainiac big business and political classes have, ever since the moment the Leave result was declared in the early hours of 23rd June 2016, persisted in doing our country down. They have thrown arrogant classist slurs at the ordinary folk of Britain who dared to dream that there could be a future brighter than under the shadowy forces of Brussels bureaucrats and fought tooth and nail to deny us our rightful destiny as a free-trading, independent nation.
But here it is. This evening, at 11 pm, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland takes its first bold steps out of the oppressive arms of the European Union and into a future of sovereign decision-making over our money, borders, and laws.
Nearly four years ago, then-UKIP leader Nigel Farage dared to dream that a new dawn was breaking on an independent United Kingdom. The brave and bold 52% had fought against the multinationals, the big merchant banks, against lies, corruption, and deceit, he said and won.
Little did he know that there would be a most brutal campaign waged against democracy in the subsequent years. No less than three national elections followed the EU referendum, each one a genuine People’s Vote in its own right, all of which resoundingly showed continued and strengthened support for our exit from the European Union.
Graceful losers accepted defeat and embraced, albeit reluctantly for some, the inevitable. Others, including the usual suspects of Tony Blair, the Liberal Democrats, and the top EU chiefs themselves, insisted, as is characteristic of the EU project, that democracy was simply a stumbling block standing in the way of the formation of a true federalist European state.
The democratic deficit within EU institutions is obvious. More subtle, however, is the way in which Europe was, over decades, able and willing to repeatedly deny the explicit wishes of the peoples of Europe. In June 2008, to name one example of many, the Irish people rejected the Lisbon Treaty, the constitutional basis for a European Union, in a referendum by 53% to 47%. No, said the EU. Federalism and the centralisation of power was the sole aim of the EU from the beginning, and a small island nation such as Ireland was not to stand in the way of that. Barely a year later, Ireland was forced to vote again, and after a campaign in which the EU flooded their favoured side with millions of euros for campaign literature and advertising, the people reluctantly stepped aside.
In Britain, however, the EU found a nation too big to bully. At times, we came perilously close to losing Brexit, and thus our right to self-define as a liberal democratic nation. Those once fighting for a second referendum should now be hanging their heads in shame that a significant minority of liberal elites who thought that the British public had got it wrong and must be given a chance to rectify their mistake.
We were, however, absolutely right, and would not back down until our dream became a reality. And that reality begins today. We’ve been slurred left, right, and centre as racists, extremists, far-right and deluded. We may have been called names, but we never gave up.
Thank you Winston Churchill, Tony Benn, Kate Hoey, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, and the 17.4 million, for your unwavering patriotism, the undying sparks of which have helped us to arrive at this day.
Later today we will be out. It is my sincere hope that politicians will never, ever dare to find the audacity to ignore us again.
