THE hour of destiny beckons. The moment of freedom has almost arrived. In exactly one year from now Britain will formally leave the European Union and begin the process of restoring our independence from foreign rule. The return of our sovereignty, after almost five decades of deepening entanglement with Brussels will be a remarkable milestone in our island story.
A bright sunlit upland is our future out of the EU
It is an event that will rank alongside other historic episodes that showed our indefatigable national spirit, such as the defeat of Nazi tyranny in the 1940s or the first embrace of Parliamentary democracy in the 1830s.
The triumph of Brexit in the EU referendum was testimony to the innate courage, patriotism and wisdom of the British people, who refused to be cowed by a barrage of establishment scaremongering and smears.
As liberty approaches, the nation will reap its reward for that heroic defiance.
Already the move towards our withdrawal has contracted all the alarmism peddled by the pro-EU brigade. The economy has not collapsed. Unemployment is at a record low, manufacturing at a record high. The public finances are heading towards a surplus for the first time since the crash of 2008.
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Just as the Brexiters promised during the referendum campaign, more money is becoming available for the NHS.
Similarly, the talks between our Government and the EU have made much more progress than the Remainers predicted. Only last week Theresa May signed a comprehensive deal on the transition period lasting up to the end of 2020, under which Britain will be allowed to negotiate its own global deals.
In this mood of co-operation, discussions will now focus on our trading relationship, with the European Council pledging its wish for “a balanced, ambitious and wide-ranging free trade agreement”.
As each passing day brings Brexit closer, the dynamic of success will accelerate. The deadline of withdrawal by March 2019 creates its own momentum, building ever more widespread acceptance of our departure and turning British self-governance into a reality.
Diehard Remainers understand the impetus for Brexit imposed by the timetable. The losers know they will not be able to operate their roadshow for much longer. That is why they have become more desperate in recent weeks. Their lurid conspiracy theories about sinister data manipulation and their unsubstantiated claims about the Leave campaign’s illegal expenditure are part of a last-ditch effort to undermine the referendum result.
That same sense of panic applies to doom-mongering from pro-EU grandees such as Tony Blair, Sir John Major and Lord Patten.
But such squawking is increasingly irrelevant. The British people just want the Government to get on with the implementation of Brexit, not hold a rerun of the vote. Most citizens recognise that we have nothing to fear from self-rule.
After all, that was the status of Britain for centuries before we entered the European Economic Community - the forerunner of the EU - in 1973. Indeed, independence is the natural status for most countries.
Out of 195 sovereign nations in the world, 167 enjoy autonomy, the exceptions being the 28 members of the EU.
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In the entire history of mankind the democratic nation state has proved by far the best constitutional vehicle for the advancement of freedom and prosperity, whereas the EU has turned out to be a profoundly flawed experiment in the removal of basic civic rights and national identities.
It is precisely because the EU lacks any real democratic legitimacy that the Remainers are unable to defend it. So instead they resort to forecasts of disasters once we have left the EU. Yet every one of their assertions is proving to be hollow.
They shriek about labour shortages when EU free movement ends but only yesterday the Government's own Migration Advisory Committee reported that fears about an inability to attract UK workers were "not credible".
In the same vein, Remainers gloat how Brexit means that the United Kingdom is hopelessly isolated on the international stage yet that charge has been demolished by the Government's superb co-ordination of global action against Russia after the Salisbury nerve agent poisoning.
Just as fallacious is the Remainer hysteria about the Irish border. In reality this is a minor issue that can be resolved by goodwill, especially because no side actually wants a hard border. Switzerland lies in the heart of Europe but is not in the EU, and yet through technology manages its lengthy frontier without any difficulties.
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There is every cause for optimism in our post-Brexit future. Once we are in control of our own governance, a world of exciting new opportunities is open to us. There is nothing insular or xenophobic about our withdrawal from the EU. The opposite is true. Freed from the shackles of Brussels' bureaucratic rule we will be able to build our own trading and diplomatic relationships, deepening our North Atlantic partnership and reconnecting with the Commonwealth.
We will also be in control of our own borders as we construct an immigration system suited to our own national interests rather than the ideology of the EU. The ruthless insistence by Brussels on untrammelled free movement has imposed enormous damage on Britain. Public services have been overstretched, welfare bills increased and living standards driven down. In the past year alone, according to the Office for National Statistics, no fewer than 497,000 European migrants registered for national insurance here, 154,000 from Romania. That sort of influx is unsustainable.
With the EU no longer in charge we will be able to set our own tax and benefits policies. We could abolish VAT and replace it with a more commercially competitive purchase tax. We could introduce regional variations in air passenger duty, refashion agricultural subsidies, adopt our own waste management policies or protect certain vital economic industries. The point is that we, not the unelected commissioners of Brussels, will be deciding our own national course.
Far from imposing "self harm", as the Remainers argue, Brexit will play to our strengths.
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Britain has always been an adaptable nation, full of ingenuity and determination, as shown by our record as the pioneer of the Industrial Revolution and as the victor in two world wars.
The real disaster for Britain would have occurred if the electorate had voted in 2016 to stay in the EU.
Eurocrats would have been exultant. The European project of political integration would have received a massive boost. Ex-Cabinet minister Lord Patten accused Brexiteers yesterday of wanting "dogma pie" but it is his pro-EU lot that are the true dogmatists, demanding that Britain submit to the federalist juggernaut.
The whole aim of the EU is to achieve "ever closer union" towards a federal superstate, complete with open borders, a single currency, a European army, a harmonised tax system and a new concept of EU citizenship.
National democracy counts for nothing in the EU's doctrinaire culture, as was recently shown in the dubious appointment of the sinister German Eurocrat Martin Selmayr – known as Jean-Claude Juncker's "Monster" – as the new secretary-general of the commission. His promotion was described by one French MEP as "a mystification worthy of the Chinese Communist Party".
Remainers pretend that Britain is leaving an effective organisation. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The EU is grossly mismanaged, racked by divisions and weighed down by debts.
Its contempt for national democracy has spread misery and hostility across the continent, highlighted by populist revolts everywhere from Spain to Austria.
We are better off out, as Brexit will prove.
