FOR those jubilating in the Brexit verdict of seven days ago the past week may have seemed like a seven-day party. But, in the words of the song, the party’s over.
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| Now is the time for Brexiters to seize their oppurtunity |
On every side are pseudo-friends hoping that we fail as a people and as a nation. Nowhere are they more numerous and more vindictive than right here inside the UK.
Predictions of our future failure are everywhere. In its thoroughly disreputable Remain campaign the outgoing government threatened every kind of calamity from war to economic collapse to international isolation.
This was endorsed right across the testicle-free world of luvviedom and still is.Never have I seen such fifth-columns of disaster-wishers queueing up to do this country down and pray that it fails.
Note the names, friends, note the names. If they are not to be vindicated, then we, the British who love this country warts and all, must succeed. And that is going to mean five years of gruelling hard work.
But it could be gratifying hard work and we have done it before. Remember the predictions when we were the “sick man of Europe” after 15 years of Wilson, Heath and Callaghan?
The same voices told us we were a mediocre crew, destined for permanent mediocrity. Well, we recovered after 10 years of Margaret Thatcher.
Remember how the same appeasers told us ruin awaited if we did not abolish the pound and join the eurozone? We still have the pound and it is the eurozone that is crumbling.
But if we are to succeed there are two immediate tasks that need not wait. We are nation of traders; without raw materials we must trade or perish. But the world is out there; it has not gone away and it is avid to trade with us.
Without delay this Government, even under David Cameron who swears he loves this country, should send teams of hard-nosed negotiators out into the world to exploit our new freedom to trade with anyone we wish without being chained to an all-EU treaty.
Years ago, in order to kowtow to Brussels and our home-grown defeatists, we turned our backs on the 56-nation Commonwealth. Back then they were poor; the EEC was rich. Not any more. Look at the Anglosphere. Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand.
We share similar language, culture, history, governmental democracy, law codes, trading practices, accountancy methods and long bonds of friendship, in peace and on the battlefields that saved us from Nazism and communism. Our joint economies are bigger than the shrinking EU.
Add the new giant, India, and we are much bigger in population and wealth. Why not re-animate the Commonwealth? The other task must be the eradication of great swathes of EUsourced bureaucracy.
Here our own civil service has shamelessly “goldplated” EU laws to pile the burden on our people. Not all EU-law has been bad.
We have nothing against measures to give us clean air, pure water, safe beaches. But we need teams of lawdraughtsmen at work to keep the gold and repeal the dross, setting our traders free from mountains of red tape.
We hear wails from those aided by EU handouts. They seem unable to work out that without the vast sums of wealth that we ship to Brussels we could replicate every single subsidy coming back from Brussels (trammelled by scores of conditions) and still have change to spend on those who need it right here inside the UK.
The two urgent tasks, new trade treaties and phasing out of screeds of useless red tape, need not wait. We have the right and the duty to start now.
Of course the wailers will not cease but if we succeed, if we create new friendships and renew old ones too long neglected, if we prosper despite them, they will eventually shut up.
And let us recall Abraham Lincoln’s words: “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain… and that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” Well, at least not from our British earth.
http://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/frederick-forsyth/685182/Brexiters-must-seize-opportunity-EU-referendum
