Much has been made about the post-Brexit UK forging a new relationship with the EU.
But that new relationship, argues Chris Bullivant writing in Brexit Central, should not bind future voters from choosing any route that they wish the UK to take.
The whole point of the vote to Leave, he says, was that the people of the UK want the freedom to choose how the country develops in the future – “…the freedom to become either: a paragon of the free market, or the epitome of socialism, or anywhere in between.”
And to do that means that no government, parliament or prime Minister can be allowed to bind its successors. So Chris Bullivant is right to question Theresa May talking about the need for 'binding commitments' when giving her Mansion House speech last week.
It is the 'binding commitments', signed up to without the consent of the British people, that have ensured that the UK is governed from Brussels, that puts the European Court of Justice (ECJ) above our own Supreme Court, that obliges the UK to throw open its borders as well as subjugating just about every facet of the lives of the UK people to uses made outside our shores.
As Chris Bullivant writes:
"The Prime Minister’s Mansion House speech touched on just how extensive that enmeshment has become over forty years, with no area of British life untouched by the EU: migration, goods, the integrity of the union, the Northern Ireland peace process, case law, workers’ rights, trade, goods, supply chains, small, medium and micro enterprises, agriculture, food, drinks, fisheries, labour mobility, broadcasting, financial services, energy, transport, digital, uranium, company law, intellectual property, science and innovation, education and cultural programmes."
Would the people of the UK have agreed to all that had it been made absolutely clear to them that ultimately a single EU state would control the UK?
Of course not and that was why we were led down the garden path with talk of a common market trade area.
And as he points out, it was not just Edward Heath and Harold Wilson that were involved in this deception. The likes of Tony Blair and John Major were also complicit, as well as David Cameron who went forth to 'renegotiate' the UK relationship with the EU and came back with a very blank piece of paper. And the main reason he was unsuccessful is because he was the only one talking about change of this sort.
Even now, says Bullivant, the Remain campaign refuses to address the real issue of sovereignty. Instead Remainers keep trying to deflect the argument by claiming "Brexit is about a Tory civil war, hate, xenophobia, uneducated voters, the need for 16 year olds to have the vote, a return to the 1950s, killing the future of young people, bringing about economic Armageddon …" This for me is the language of Remain charlatans intent on removing our choice at the ballot box.
But we are where we are right now and the UK is tied to the EU, but over a succession of parliaments the UK must be free to choose its own path as decided by the electorate. We must get back to the old UK premise that no parliament can bind its successor, something our membership of the EU has not allowed us to do.
