Boris Johnson will make Britain a brighter country that can stand tall in the world
DID they think we didn’t mean it? That 17.4million of us voted Leave as a bit of banter? That we weren’t fussed and would back down when corrected by our betters? Well, they know better now. The British people stuck to their guns, politely but stubbornly. A lot of MPs had tried to make the […]
DID they think we didn’t mean it? That 17.4million of us voted Leave as a bit of banter? That we weren’t fussed and would back down when corrected by our betters?
Well, they know better now. The British people stuck to their guns, politely but stubbornly.
A lot of MPs had tried to make the Election about stopping Brexit: Jo Swinson, Phillip Lee, Chuka Umunna, Anna Soubry, Dominic Grieve, Sarah Wollaston, Chris Leslie, Sam Gyimah. All of them ended up losing their seats.
We meant what we said in 2016. Three years of being told that we hadn’t understood what we voted for didn’t wear us down. It just annoyed us.
Plenty of people who voted Remain in 2016 were exasperated by the dishonesty of those MPs who, having promised to respect the result, did everything in their power to frustrate it. This week it was the country’s turn to speak.
Britain is a democracy. That doesn’t just mean that we hold votes from time to time: Russia, China and Venezuela do that.
It means we expect our votes to count. We expect MPs to act as our servants, not our rulers. We expect our decisions to be honoured.
Our bloody-mindedness obviously caused a degree of surprise in pro-Brussels circles. Other countries that have voted against European integration have been ignored or made to back down. Not Britain. When we say something, we mean it.
STICKING TO OUR GUNS
Sticking to our referendum result is not the only thing that makes us unusual.
Unlike many European countries, we have never had a Marxist party in office. Nor, in modern times, have we ever allowed an anti-Semitic party anywhere near power. Those two honourable records are still intact.
Above all, Thursday’s election was a vote for moderation. Although his detractors make him out to be some sort of extremist, Boris Johnson is a main stream politician.
Yes, he is unusually clever and gifted. Yes, he has a rich and eccentric speaking style. But his politics are pretty moderate — he is a one-nation Tory who, as a backbencher, backed Ken Clarke for the party leadership. He has always stood for liberal and humane conservatism.
The only way you can label Boris “far Right” is if you also apply that label to 17.4million Leave voters.
‘Voters treated as thick’
Plainly, the electorate doesn’t see Brexit as extreme. There is nothing wrong with wanting to live in an independent country that makes its own laws, just as Canada, Switzerland or Singapore do.
ANTI-DEMOCRATIC EXTREMISTS
People understood the real extremists were those who wanted to undo not only the referendum result but the free-market system that made Britain successful.
Jeremy Corbyn was not like previous Labour leaders.
Every past Labour PM, from Clement Attlee to Tony Blair, had accepted that the British economy rested on free contract.
Sure, they wanted to tax and spend more, but they never questioned the institution of private property.
Faced with a leader who planned to expropriate private pensions, schools and companies, the British people cheerfully sent him on his way.
Those who, even now, insist on seeing the Brexit project as a product of extremism should reflect on the fact that — again, unusually within the EU — Britain has no populist anti-immigrant party in its Parliament.
Nigel Farage, who spent the campaign attacking Boris’s deal and laying into the Tories, is now trying to claim some sort of role in their victory.
It won’t wash. People voted for Boris because they liked his politics and the settlement he was offering. Farage, like Corbyn, was sent on his way.
Above all, the electorate turned out to be brighter than MPs expected.
Ever since the 2016 referendum, political leaders have treated voters in general, and Leavers in particular, as a bit thick.
Labour’s campaign, like the Remain campaign, assumed we were dimwits.
We were supposed to believe, for example, in some plot to sell off the NHS, when it was clear in black and white that no one was proposing such a thing.
We were supposed to believe that the Government could spend an extra trillion pounds and no one outside the top five per cent would pay for it.
We were supposed to believe that a mandatory four-day week wouldn’t wreck our competitiveness.
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We looked on these silly promises with a fond, if cynical, smile and, once again, we turned elsewhere. After three years of parliamentary blockage, we can finally leave the EU — and in a friendly manner.
We can rejoin the community of nations as a serious democracy, one that has turned away from extremism, anti-Semitism and revolutionary socialism.
We can, in short, stand tall in the world.
- Daniel Hannan is Conservative MEP for the South East.
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