It is now five months since the historic vote when the UK voted to leave the European Union and the formal process of leaving will start within the next four months. I am looking forward to us becoming a fully independent and sovereign nation once again. No more will politicians of any persuasion be able to avoid accountability by saying that our EU membership stops us from doing anything.
We will of course still be friends and allies with other European countries but we will not be having a Norwegian model or a Swiss model, or either of the made-up media terms of ‘Hard Brexit’ or ‘Soft Brexit’. We will be having an agreement between an independent sovereign United Kingdom and the European Union which will reflect a cooperative relationship that close friends and allies enjoy.
We will decide for ourselves as a country how we control immigration and we will be free to pass our own laws. We will also be free of bullying by unelected Eurocrats, the recent comments of some of whom suggest they want to punish the British people for having the ‘audacity’ to vote for us to determine our own future outside of the EU.
Unfortunately, such arrogance comes across as showing contempt for ordinary people and suggests that the EU is failing to grasp why they are becoming so unpopular across Europe. I think that’s a real shame because if the EU had behaved more in line with the ideals of the Common Market (the old EEC) that the UK voted to join in 1975, the EU today could be a popular and successful grouping of countries that are prospering.
The Conservative Government will shortly introduce a Great Repeal Bill to remove the European Communities Act from the statute book on the day we leave, meaning that the authority of EU law in Britain will finally end. Our vision as a truly global nation is possible and is in our sight. Let’s now have the confidence in ourselves to go out into the world, secure trade deals, win contracts, generate wealth and create jobs.
Councillor Duncan Crow, Leader of Crawley Borough Council Conservative Group
23rd November 2016