Brexit became such a polarised debate that almost from the start, it was impossible to find a Remainer who would admit that there could possibly be a single argument for Brexit, or a Brexiteer who could see any value in the EU. Yet the reality is that the truth of the decision was always much more nuanced than that. The Covid years illustrate both its importance and its flaws.
I have strong ties to France and, like many others familiar with European politics and life, I was worried by the drive for ever-increasing EU integration, since the Code Napoleon and other key elements of the French political system were part of its bedrock, along with Italian standards of financial probity and German ambitions for European unification. Yet there was much that was wonderful about the EU, such as the borderless ability to see my family in France and work or buy property almost as easily as a French citizen could.
Ultimately, my decision was that Britain had to leave the EU to remain a free and democratic nation, with the people of the U.K. deciding the future of the U.K. However, Brexit did not and could not guarantee that our Government would defend our democratic rights and liberties, or that it would run the country well, or even that in ‘taking back control’ from one supranational institution it would not hand it to others.
So, while this article marks the seventh anniversary of Brexit, it’s not celebratory. We have missed many of its opportunities, failed to cut away much of the baggage of EU membership, and become bogged down in parliamentary skirmishes, with the majorities who backed Remain in both the Lords and the Commons clinging doggedly to their underlying beliefs about the benefits of European integration despite the popular mandate for Leave in both 2016 and the 2019 election.
It’s now clear that Brexit was not a clean break, but the start of a slow, long-term process that will be fought every step of the way. Its importance, however, is paramount. In our response to Covid and the way it contrasted with that of other EU nations, we can see why.
It’s now obvious that Sweden did far better than any other European nation on every measure in its response to Covid, even if the lockdown zealots who dominate the one-sided Covid Inquiry seem determined to stick their fingers in their ears rather than review the evidence.
Study after study now shows that the total number of all-cause excess deaths in Sweden is far lower than in most countries which locked down and the recovery has been swifter. The U.K. has a generation of children who have suffered unprecedented harm from the restrictions of 2020-22; Sweden, which largely kept its schools open, doesn’t. On measure after the measure, the comparative performance of our two countries shows just what a bad decision lockdown was.
Sweden was, of course, part of the EU. So here we have an EU member state able to set its own course and make far better decisions than the post-Brexit U.K., which actually followed the EU consensus in enforcing tough restrictions. We had greater freedom to act and a Government with a clear mandate to forge its own path – yet it took an EU member state to defy the repressive consensus approach.
How, then, is it possible to argue that the lessons of Covid give us a compelling argument for Brexit – one that becomes more urgent, not less, as events continue to unfold?
Brexit does not and cannot guarantee that our Government will make good decisions. It means only that it will have the opportunity to do so, and that in ‘taking back control’, the U.K. people will be able to hold it to account for its performance.
Remainers often talk as if every failure of the U.K. Government is a failure of Brexit – particularly where the EU appears to perform better. That misunderstands what Brexit was supposed to achieve. Brexit simply returned democratic control over a vast array of decisions affecting the U.K. to its people (or should have done, had it been delivered properly).
The European Commission is not answerable to the European people for its decisions in any meaningful way. While the lack of accountability in institutions like this has obvious attractions for politicians who must otherwise win elections, spend time with the public and battle the media, it’s at odds with the values on which the U.K. was built.
By contrast, the U.K. Government is held to account at least once every five years. In a properly functioning democratic system, this has important benefits. The democratic process holds corruption in check, allows new political ideas to be debated, ensure that tired administrations are refreshed, forces politicians to connect with ordinary people and rewards good decision-making.
Brexit was above all a vote for this democratic system. However, the Covid pandemic highlighted that the EU is only one of the threats it faces.
2020-22 saw the wholesale removal of rights and liberties which are essential to a properly functioning democracy, such as freedom of speech. Where Government decisions cannot be debated freely, accountability withers. The lockdown years shocked many by revealing just how fragile these cornerstones of our democracy have become.
If Brexit means ‘taking back control’, then it stands for more than simply exiting the EU with a somewhat fudged deal.
It means preserving freedom of speech, ensuring that the U.K. retains control over its response to a pandemic, and saying no to global treaties that limit our ability to govern ourselves by, for example, dictating minimum tax levels. In short, it means ensuring that the democratically elected U.K. Government retains the power to decide the key policies for this country.
In this sense, Brexit is far from complete. Indeed, the lockdown years revealed just how much territory must still be fought.
Regardless of Brexit, when I cast my vote in an election today, I am voting for a party that, in Government, has far less control over almost every area of my life and future than it did when I was 18.
In many areas, the real control has been passed to so-called ‘independent’ bodies (‘independent’ being one of those elevating terms which today are so often used to graft morality and superiority onto processes and bodies which damage our rights and institutions; here it means ‘not subject to political influence’ which means ‘not democratically accountable’). These may be global, like the WHO, regional, like the EU, or national, like Ofcom.
They all in their different ways mean that the MPs whom you and I elect are increasingly constrained in their ability to deliver on the promises they make. This in turn leads to distrust, cynicism, apathy and a general erosion of faith in the ability of our democratic system to deliver what people expect when they vote. It’s the frustration that Leave campaigners tapped into with the promise to ‘take back control’.
As ‘independent’ bodies, they wield power but sit loftily above those who might otherwise demand that they answer for the actions. It’s a safe bet that our ‘independent’ Covid Inquiry will not criticise them, though they have much for which they should be held to account.
It was Ofcom, not the EU, which wrote to broadcasters in March 2020 threatening them with statutory sanction (which could mean removal of their licence to broadcast) if they dared to allow critical scrutiny of the extreme and unprecedented onslaught on the rights and liberties of U.K. people. That killed the opportunity to scrutinise and debate the measures, ensuring that the U.K. followed a hideously destructive path without properly considering the alternatives.
Yet it is the EU, not Ofcom, which is now working with the World Health Organisation to systematise ways of enforcing controls on movement and behaviour throughout Europe and enforce them globally so that, for example, travellers will be tracked and a full set of all the vaccinations that the WHO decides are needed will be required for travel.
The EU is also enthusiastically committed to the Pandemic Treaty, which as currently drafted will hand unprecedented powers to control the lives, freedoms and future well-being of the citizens of signatory states to the World Health Organisation when it chooses to declare a health crisis. There is a real risk here of a hostile country or even a private individual gaining sufficient influence with the WHO to impose hugely damaging policies with a view to their own advantage or to pursue their preferred ideology.
You may wonder why the EU has chosen to ignore the shining example of its own maverick state and instead is ratcheting towards harsher measures next time. Perhaps it is the modern media-driven mindset which always wants to be seen to be doing something – even the wrong thing. Perhaps it is simply that those who like unaccountable power will always take the opportunity to seize more of it.
Whatever the reason, the direction is clear. And the people of the EU, who suffered terribly and unnecessarily from the harsh restrictions of 2020-22 face the prospect of more with little opportunity to make their feelings known.
If there is another pandemic, the steps that the EU and the WHO are taking together likely mean that Sweden will not again be free to act independently in the way that it did. In 2020, we locked down, but we can now see from the example of Sweden that there was a better way which would have seen fewer excess deaths and far less economic damage.
In the U.K., we got it largely wrong. Yet if we keep our independence of action and our freedom of speech, we can, if we choose, learn and progress so that we do better next time.
By contrast, Sweden, which got it right, may well be forced to take the wrong path in future because it is constrained by EU-wide pandemic policy.
Indeed, the U.K. did arguably derive some benefit from Brexit in areas where Sweden was constrained. Boris Johnson would undoubtedly point to his vaccination programme as the prime example. He moved swiftly ahead while the EU was mired in internal processes.
So the U.K. had the ability to act with great freedom and decision in the crisis. It could and should have been as bold in facing down the calls for lockdown.
Brexit can’t change a bad Government decision. It’s about whether we want our own elected representatives in charge. Even a poor democratic U.K. Government is better than unaccountable supranational control because a functioning democracy allows for learning and change, which offer the opportunity to do better next time.
Our own Government has also backed the Pandemic Treaty. You may question why we went through all the pain of leaving only to follow the EU blindly down the same destructive path. However, campaigners here are opening it up to scrutiny. Mass petitions have already seen debates in Westminster Hall. More MPs are beginning to ask questions; concerns are taking root. There’s a chance to change the Government’s approach. That’s democratic accountability in action post-Brexit and it is making a difference.
Meanwhile, the European Commission continues down its path untroubled by the concerns of EU citizens, who have no equivalent mechanisms to allow their voices to be heard.
All human progress rests on the ability to debate freely, to make the case for differing solutions and see how they fare in real life.
The essence of the scientific method is to keep developing, debating and testing rival ideas and hypotheses to discover those which work best in a quest for continual learning and improvement.
These concepts are central to the success of Western civilisation; they underpin our economic success, our health, happiness, security and well-being.
When Covid hit, we were told that our liberties and the values on which our country was built, for which so many died in previous generations, are luxuries, fripperies to be discarded as useless baggage whenever a serious issue comes along. Free speech – too dangerous. Freedom of movement – too dangerous. Freedom to trade – too dangerous. Freedom to think for ourselves – too dangerous.
In place of the scientific method, we are now being told that there is ‘settled science’ in many fields and the stakes are too high to allow it to be challenged.
The opposite is true. Our values and liberties are essential to our wellbeing and even more so in a crisis. The more serious a threat is, the more vital it is that we strive to find the best answers. Nothing is too important for free speech, no science so ‘settled’ that scientific method can no longer be applied. Removing free speech also ensures a growing distrust of the media and, with it, the growth of resistance to the very ideas which were deemed so important that they could not be challenged.
During the pandemic, we were told that the official position was the only acceptable position. The experts who disagreed included some of the U.K.’s preeminent health experts and most respected doctors – people like Professor Sunetra Gupta, Professor Carl Heneghan and Professor Karol Sikora. Shamefully, they were denigrated and belittled by crass, uninformed interviewers obeying their orders from Ofcom on the BBC, Sky and elsewhere, or simply denied the chance to speak at all. Many others were intimidated into staying silent. Some who feared for their jobs and livelihoods instead quietly lent their expertise behind the scenes to campaigns like Recovery.
Yet campaigns like Recovery were able to make headway. Our voices were heard at the highest level. We talked to MPs and Cabinet ministers. Ultimately, we came out of restrictions faster because of that.
It’s not much to celebrate, but it’s more than we would have had if the WHO had been in charge, as it may be next time.
So on its seventh anniversary, the importance of Brexit is greater than ever. Not because it gave us a better outcome during 2020-22, but because of all it can give back to us, as long as we value and understand the importance of our freedom to think and act as a sovereign nation.
Our democracy and the liberties that underpin it were the great gifts we all received at birth, forged from the experience of millennia of human progress, bought for us by previous generations at incalculable cost. They are our birthright and our hope of a better future.
The Covid years show that Brexit is not the only battle we will have to fight to keep them. However, without the vote in 2016, they would likely already be lost.
Jon Dobinson co-founded and led the Recovery campaign against Covid restrictions and lockdowns from its launch in 2020. He is a former Secretary-General of the International Society of Human Rights (U.K.) and Chair of judges at the International Business Awards.
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Good article.
But it seems to me that what the relative failure of Brexit showed is that the EU was just one symptom of the globalism that is deeply entrenched in the whole of the West, with its centre not in Europe, but in the USA.
In fact, from many sources it appears that Britain’s Establishment was, and is, the primary European agent of globalism. Hence the concerted opposition to Brexit, the cheerleading of Britain above all the EU nations for a war against Russia and/or China, and of course the lockstep response to COVID.
Even the claim that Britain was the US “mole” in the EU does not seem implausible to me.
None of this alters the message of the article that “we” need to fight for our liberties, but the “we” needs to be carefully defined as the common people of Britain, rather than the political system, which represents them no more than the EU did.
Britain is indeed the primary agent of globalism, and a lot else I may add.. managed through its ‘good offices’ (sarc) in the City of London. Dare I mention the Rottenchilds et al. There’s a very good reason Britain was called Perfidious Albion..
What is missing here is leadership. It’s not leave or remain, it is the ability to take decisive action rather than politically correct action. One of the few politicians I see with it today is Ron DeSantis. Structures can affect ability to deliver but I do not see any conviction other than to how a message is received in the polls.
Ah.! The rise of the focus group.! People who have no clue, trying to find one in what know-nowts think. Its a poor substitute, but I think we saw during Covid that Government policy was pretty much led by public opinion polls…
Yes and when politicians pander to popularity, playing both sides as circumstance dictates, you get this mess.
But they are not pandering to popularity, they are pandering to the margins.
How popular is grooming and sexualisation of our children, Pride flags, parades, reducing the electricity supply and higher electricity prices, inflation, mass immigration… well a long list?
Public opinion was created by government policy: if the government had been honest about the trivial threat posed by the disease there would have been little support for the extreme policies put in place.
Ron DeSantis is most definitely not his own man despite giving the appearance of being one. No, just like so many others, including Robert Kennedy, he’s firmly under the control of the Zionist lobby..
So far Brexit has brought us COVID jabs a month before other EU countries… and nothing else,
So I would say Brexit so far has been a massive con perpetrated by a bunch of salesmen completely incapable of delivering what they sold.
The economic impact of Brexit has been virtually nothing. Despite the IMF, the World Bank & indeed our very own OBR & BofE consistently predicting that we’ll underperform our peer countries we’ve, slightly surprisingly, had the highest or 2nd highest growth over the past couple of years (admittedly, from a lockdown induced low).
EU peers, such as Germany, are in recession, we’re a nano % above it.
None of it’s made much difference. Of course, we’ve spent far more than the promised £350m a week on the NHS & look where that got us.
Covid was an accelerant, we’ve got to the economic state we’re in 10 years earlier than we would otherwise have done. The vaccines accelerate heart problems & possibly cancers. The authoritarian tendency heralded in by Covid nonsense accelerated the imposition of net zero, CBDC & WHO pandemic treaty & the panoply of global restrictions coming down the line.
Brexit has, so far, been a sideshow.
“we’ve, slightly surprisingly, had the highest or 2nd highest growth over the past couple of years (admittedly, from a lockdown induced low)”
The chart “G7 real GDP % change compared to pre-pandemic level” in the publication linked below shows a different picture. Comparing Q1 2023 with Q4 2019, UK is -0.5%, Eurozone is +2.2% and USA is +5.4%.
I guess it depends on the start and end dates chosen for comparison. And, as you imply, with the massive intervention of the covid policy measures, it is pretty much impossible to identify cause and effect as regards impact on economic performance.
GDP – International Comparisons: Key Economic Indicators – House of Commons Library (parliament.uk)
Its called BRINO Stewart.. Brexit in name only, they’re still all ‘in it together’ against us plebs.
Well that is true, except that does not devalue Brexit.
Brexit has been a massive con because it has not been enacted. End of.
Except we don’t actually have Brexit yet. So all of the squirming leftists blaming every bit of bad news on Brexit are WRONG. (as usual)
What we do have is many of the negative consequences of Brexit, such as lost trading opportunities with the EU due to being outside the single market.
What we don’t have of course is Ursula Von der Liar.. not that that makes a difference, they’re all equal on the corruption stakes..
The EU is a protectionist Customs Union – it is mercantilist by nature.
You confuse free movement of goods with free market trading.
When a central authority fixes the conditions of trade to exclude market disruptive innovation and technology, to stifle competition internally and exclude it externally, forcing consumers to shop only within it, a near autarkical ‘single market’ exists. That carries no benefit for consumers who have to pay more for ‘access’ to this wundermart, have less choice than otherwise if they were able to trade freely outside it.
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production. The interest of producers is to be considered only as much as it benefits consumers. – Adam Smith.
The EU is the exact opposite of that truism. Only those who are bonkers can imagine this is desirable.
I don’t understand people who think paying more to consume goods and thus making themselves poorer just in order to be part of an ideological Fascistic club is a benefit to them.
Funny old World.
Absolutely..
That’s not really true.
Selling goods to the EU is now harder as it requires customs procedures and duties that weren’t required before.
Also, British nationals can’t spend more than 3 months every 6 months in an EU country without having to go through some immigration process.
Also, the reverse is true for EU nationals in the UK.
That’s just the ones I’m aware of.
So actually, “Brexit” has happened. I think what you mean is that it has been a gigantic flop, which I would agree with.
We could debate the reasons for that, but I would put somewhere near the top of the list, if not at the very top, is that those that sold us the tale aren’t delivering. I don’t want to hear excuses about the EU not cooperating, or international organisations undermining us, the the globalist elite infiltrating our political system.
They sold us something and they haven’t delivered, They should have had a better plan for delivering. What did they think, that they wouldn’t face some resistance? That everyone would go – oh, ok, off you go then..
It’s been a giant scam by a bunch of stupid, amateurish tossers.
We’ve been governed and administered by remainers since the referendum.
Boris Johnson is not a Remainer. He’s an incompetent twat and a giant bullshitter whose bullshit eventually caught up with him.
Gove is a serpent who stands for nothing but himself as demonstrated by the way he weasels his way into positions with every government, regardless of its policies.
The British public was scammed by those two tossers who in reality couldn’t organise a piss up in a brothel.
And Farage has just washed his hands of the whole thing, He’s given up.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newsscotland/brexit-is-biggest-act-of-self-harm-in-history-of-uk-and-it-will-take-decades-to-recover/ar-AA1cUUv9
Not the COVID response? Not the policies of successive governments?
The main achievement of Brexit was highlighting that a) the public cannot always be nudged and b) there will be an endless push to ‘correct’ the public thinking.
The combination of Net Zero, lockdowns/jabbings and population replacement makes Brexit seem like a paper cut in comparison.
Speaking with my Francophile hat on.. many of my French friends are actually envious of Brexit and want Frexit.They say they were stuffed by Sarkozy and the Lisbon Treaty, and as an aside.. absolutely detest Ursula Von de Liar..
Why keep pushing this wretched ‘covid’ thing, you’re inferring there was actually a pandemic. There wasn’t.. it was a hoax, carried on the back of fake PCR testing. Fake like everything else spewed forth by governments, WEF, WHO, UN, and every other Tom-Dick or Mohammed worldwide..
There was no pandemic. Posted yet again the graph below to prove it..
Is that chart for the UK? Please clarify…
Yes.. compiled by the BMJ – British Medical Journal using ONS statistics, and first published here by our own Will Jones..
thanks
Bang on Will.
Britain is suffering from Long EU.
Symptoms: continued authoritarianism; erosion of the Common Law; protectionism; indentured servitude for its citizens; corrupt Uni-Party State; State direction of the economy to benefit cronies; alliance with global vested interests moving toward global governance.
I think we need a vaccine.
I tried to read this. But I’m tired of Brexels with no clue about the actual workings of the EU flaunting their ignorance. Apparently, they don’t have any other properties. Hence again: The EU is a confederation of states and not a federal state and it doesn’t have a government of its own. EU-wide policy decisions are made by the council of representatives of the elected governments of the EU member states and the EU commission is just the head of the EU administration which is responsible for the implementation of these policy decisions. This EU adminstration is also small enough that one could comfortably loose it in a corner of Whitehall and would need to spend some time searching in order to find it again.
What on earth has Brexit got to do with the covid pantomime?
C1984 was magicked up in order to pave the way for the initial wave of cull injections. With that undertaking out of the way the Davos Deviants could move on to Digital ID’s and CBDC and once those are in place the gates can be banged shut and the real depopulation process can begin.
That’s pretty much all there is to it.
Exactly.. well said Hux..
Thanks Will.
While we’re at that: The other fairy tale.
There are no German ambitions for European unification. The German ruling caste, which was forcibly installed by foreign powers who had fought to more-or-less avoidable world wars solely for being able to do that has ambitions to get rid of Germans as people and Germany as their nation state. This is meant to be accomplised by funneling loads and loads of German money into the EU (among other things) with the goal to reduce Germany to nothing but an EU region predominantly populated by a random selection of outcasts from all over the globe.
From my reading of history, not the stuff we get rammed down our throats from school age in the UK, I’d say you make a very valid point. Maybe one day the truth will out. I for one hope it does, and hope again that I’m still around to witness it..
I think the Brexit vote was a rare occasion on which a large number of voters ignored the advice of the establishment. Sadly that didn’t carry through to Covid. We need to be less trusting and more sceptical of the motives of each and every organisation, public, private, national, global. The larger and more global the less trusting we should be.
tof – I thought you accepted that the C1984 was a Scamdemic and if that is the case why are people rambling on about how the pantomime was run?
Definitely a scam, yes, which I think could have been thwarted if people had been more truculent.
Excellent article but……
”Boris Johnson would undoubtedly point to his vaccination programme as the prime example. He moved swiftly ahead while the EU was mired in internal processes” and no mention that it was in fact one of the most unmitigated disasters inflicted upon the British people since WW2. 2,300 plus deaths thousands upon thousands of adverse reactions causing many many life changing injuries including amputations and no proof anywhere (oh except of “the models”) of any life saved. The elephant is still very much in the room even in TDS.