I think that the importance of one consequence of that Brexit vote is not generally recognised. It broke the Conservative Party.
David Cameron's resignation the morning after the vote cheered me almost more than the vote itself. Sure, Boris Johnson became Prime Minister eventually, after the Theresa May fiasco. But the squabbles within the Conservative Party over Brexit, which ultimately led to their crushing defeat in 2024, showed them to be hopelessly infiltrated by careerist hacks and social democrats, and to be much more interested in power than in any principle.
The hope for the British Centre-Right is that the Conservatives can go on fading, and be replaced by Reform. That will be a hard struggle, but I wish us good fortune in the wars to come!
They are going to need to find a British version of Trump - someone from outside the political establishment. That won't be easy because they'd have to become a politician, get elected as an MP, build up a network, be effective within the party. Trump is a president not a prime minister - he's not first amongst equals is he? He's the capo di tutti capi. We don't have one of those - we have an emasculated monarchy as our capo!
I also think our system discourages mavericks and independently-minded people - it promotes conformists and people happy to work within the system. The civil service needs major reforms to get it back to being politically neutral but how's that going to happen when it has become more powerful that the politicians? The whole shebang simply drains the life out of anyone who tries to change it. Let's be honest, Nigel Farage is really just an establishment figure who doesn't mind saying "wrong" things. Would he really make any difference if he became PM? (which won't happen as long as the Right won't work together).
My half-Danish wife worked in Italy for 8 years after graduating in 1968. I worked in Italy for 2 years at the end of the 70s in Rieti where we met, married and spent a year in Texas and then a couple back in the UK before I got my dream job on the Cote d'Azur where we stayed for 5 years in the early 80s. My wife got a job back at TI when our youngest was old enough for school too.
We decided to go back to the UK then for the kids' education, but when we retired early in 2004 we sold up in the UK and bought and restored a rustico in the hills near the sea in Liguria and lived there very happily in 2018.
So we have extensive experience of Europe, lived experience too, not just holidays although we had those too and many work trips all over the continent. We both speak French and Italian fluently. My wife can also get by in Danish, German and Spanish and we receive pensions from both France and Italy.
We both voted to leave as we believe that the EU is bad for normal people and it was surprising how many people in our little Italian village congratulated the UK the next day for having the courage to vote no.
We would happily have stayed out there, but our daughter and Italian partner (who she met on holiday with us) moved back to the UK with their 3 children where our other 3 grandchildren were living, so the pull of family and the difficulty of looking after our steep terraced 1 acre garden with dodgy knees brought us back. We miss Italy and France a lot, but go back regularly and don't regret our decision.
We also think Brexit was the right choice even if we haven't taken full advantage of it yet, but the opportunity remains and we can see the regretfully inevitable decline of the EU and think it will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions eventually.
To some extent, we are mirror images around this topic, David.
I took the referendum very seriously, but the question for me was: if we leave Europe, will we open a new political discourse for the United Kingdom...? It seemed to me that if this was not the case, if we did not have the will or the mechanisms to start that new discourse about what it means to be British, that leaving the EU would only be to make small exchanges in our influential oligarchs.
So I voted Remain. But unlike most who did, it did not distress me that the electorate voted to Leave. Indeed, I believe a great many working class people voted to leave just to give the middle finger to David Cameron, and why should they not...?
Then came the Nonsense. And as it exposed the atrocious workings of the EU, mirroring the authoritarian Biden regime in the US, I became glad we had left the European Union. As the EU invoked censorship powers without fear of reprisal, I felt relieved that the UK had at least moved out of this madhouse... even if, as has become abundantly clear since, we had not come close to dismantling our own insane asylum at all.
Thanks, Chris. Remaining was a perfectly sensible and honourable choice. I never had a problem with Remainers. The real problem was the indefensible attempt to defeat and/or ‘soften’ Brexit after the Leave vote. That radicalised me (with the Nonsense as you call it being in a sense the icing on the cake).
The trouble is, while you and I were engaging with this issue like citizens, the political classes would prefer not to have citizens involved with the messy business of 'governing', as you have shrewdly pointed out here on more than one occasion. 🙂
An interesting exposition of your reasons for voting Leave. You'd be interested in chatting to my neighbour, a retired Oxford philosophy don, who surprised me (as he's an old Leftie: staunch Labour, raises money for Amnesty, etc) by telling me he'd also voted Leave.
My personal reasons were founded on British 'exceptionalism' (in the sense of 'different' not 'superior'). Our status as an island nation giving us fixed and relatively impermeable boundaries; our legal system of Common not Roman-based laws; our economy based predominantly on services, not manufacturing, agriculture or tourism - all of which made us a very poor fit within the EU (particularly as a nascent superstate).
But, of course, the only real reason for voting Leave (as Remainers, with their infallible insight into the minds of Leave voters, repeatedly tell us) is either a desire to rebuild the British Empire, or being racist fascists.
You could make an argument that the EU represents a political structure nestled within the international social democratic consensus. So while we may have left the political structure of the EU we have failed to escape from the international social democratic consensus. And more importantly that broad consensus continues surround us because our own elected leaders cannot think outside that box.
But the world changes. The international social democratic consensus is falling to bits and it would be wise to think that it cannot be restored.
So I voted Leave and hoped for better things. I still do, but it now seems that Brexit was not the stunning result we believed... but just one more step on the road to taking back control.
The EU falling to bits and coming apart at the seams as you say AC. So no wonder clever Keir has taken one look and thinks, ‘Yes let’s have some of that!’.
In all fairness this is nothing new. He’s been trying to overturn the democratic referendum since 24th June 2016.
Thank you for this , as always. Your consistency in outlining the relationship between state and electorate amongst other things, clarifies my own muddled thinking
In the US the ordinary American had their eyes opened by the debacle that ensued under Biden. (The law fare, the political prosecutions, the arrest of parents at school board meetings etc.)This was a necessary awakening. It doesn't matter what the Government agencies tell you is happening if your reality is completely different. Americans are always aware of what their 'tax dollars' fund. A country founded on the principle of 'no taxation without representation' keeps a clear eye of this. Many Americans (not Coastal elites yet) have woke up and didn't like what they see. This has still to happen in UK. State media manipulation has a lot to do with the. (IMO)
It seems to me that we have not lost the war. However people must regain their sense of purpose and be prepared for hard times as we stand up to these Communist thugs who rule us. The Government has decided to to declare a war on us the people. (Can only speak for England) They think we will respond to threats and name calling with fear of being called a 'racist' or something worse (after all they want to redefine a terrorist) with fear and compliance. I hope not.
As an ardent Remainer at the time it was our response to the referendum that 'radicalised' me against the leftishist PMC, best manifested in the 'FBPE' (Follow Back Pro European) thing on Twitter. Sure, I marched for a 2nd referendum, because I was upset. But it became clear that something very undemocratic was afoot and I began to resent the bloody mindedness of my own side, along with its contempt for those who didn't see things our way.
I still think that Brexit was the wrong answer to the wrong question but it also seems clear now that the EU is quite a malign project, albeit with 'good' intentions.
What I cannot forgive or forget is how both sides lied with such impunity. Those clowns Daniel Hannan and Boris Johnson insisting that Brexit did not mean any disruption to trade and the stupid 'sunlit uplands' that everyone with a thinking brain could see are unattainable without significantly more visionary domestic leadership.
I've never received more hate online than when the FBPE crowd decided that I was a 'traitor' and must really hate Europe because I pointed out that the matter was settled, whether we liked it or not. Amusingly I had moved to Normandy by this point, such was my lack of commitment to being a good cosmopolitan (like you, David, with your 'forrin' partner).
These days I think that Brexit was a necessary evil, if that makes sense. It cost me about 20-25% of the life savings I moved here with and none of the ordinary people it was supposed to benefit seem to have so far seen an improvement to their lives. But the more I understand of the EU - behind the mask, as it were - the more I think that it won't be a bad thing if more countries follow suit.
Makes total sense. In a way we have seen one of the benefits of Brexit in that it has exposed the British political class for the joke that it is. In the 'good old days' the EU was a nice firewall - politicians could hide behind our membership of the organisation and, to a certain extent, rely on it. Now they can't and this has made them more accountable - and we can see the results for ourselves. This I think may be a necessary first stage - clearing out all the dross.
Indeed - and the biggest learning I had was that the 'levers' to limit the impact of migration from eastern European countries were deliberately ignored by our political class of all colours.
A brilliantly thoughtful piece David. I share your feelings about Brexit. We thought we’d won. Twice. First after the referendum, and then after we left five years ago. But our masters have only contempt for our choices. And so it has all been for nothing and we are inevitably going back in under Starmer.
This week I dusted down the very first article I ever wrote for Substack. It’s on the subject of Brexit and the elite’s/deep state’s/PTB’s attitude to it. I’m delighted to say it’s found a new audience. So I share it here if that’s OK.
"Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart"
Come to think of it, Henry was on a safe bet there. "Depart" - and go where? Wander through the French countryside, full of groups of knights looking for Englishmen to kill? Stop for a meal and a rest at a nice little farm where the locals would cut your throat the moment you dozed off? Ha! Staying for the battle was the safest option by far.
Henry was a very nasty man - check out how he enjoyed roasting early Protestants - but he was no fool.
We are in a constitutional crises and stems back to the Queens coronation and The Blair Witch Project era. The Lords petitioned The Queen in February 2001 over giving Royal Assent to the EU treaty, under article 61 of Magna Carta 1215 as their duty, because no foreign law can superseed our laws. After 40 days (her private secretary did respond but not good enough answer) A61 of MC1215 kicked in 23.3.2001 which sacked Monarch, Courts, Parliament and Commonwealth countries until the people seek redress. Announced in the Times and Guardian the next day and thats the last we heard of it. Blair ploughed ahead with EU. Cameron gave us the referendum cause with 3.5m European voters expected to win and that would have ended our Ancient rights and constution. They hadn't bargained on the people who had never voted before coming out in drones. So Brexit was a con in itself. Hard Brexit left the next day, would have seeked redress. But they invoked A50 which handed EU the rights to us leaving. Which is insane and caused the problems it did. With the Bbc in glee as they had blackmailed Ted Heath into ECC knowling causing Treason and sedition in office. This is the reason that fake King Charles announced WEF Great Reset. 1950 The Stone of Destiny was stolen which is the eyes of God. Queens Coronation was delayed for 18mths whilst they searched for real one and went agead with one that was returned. Look at her Coronation Oath and you'll see it has been forged, signed at top. This is why Blair had the death sentence for treason suspended (Constitutional Law can not get rid of) and there's been no Royal Assent given to any Law since 1951. To get over all this no-one has authority and hence councils, courts, police, mp's and Government are Corporations - Gov is THE DIGITAL POUND FOUNDATION LIMITED registered at Companies House. We have a shadow govt and everything breaking Laws all over the place and commiting Democide via vaxx's, Midazolam and Morphine and poisioning the air, water and food. Population Replacement. You seem to be smart and clued up, research this all you want and please do something about it, cause we're heading for annihilation one way or another
It really is a shame that for all his bluster and flaws, Johnson's time as PM coincided with covid (and the Boris immigration wave of his own making it must be said).
In the early days of his premiership I get the feeling he was happy to let other, more serious people, plan and enact the strategy and he would go and sell it to voters by holding a fish to the cameras or something.
You speak of national renewal, but selling that national renewal is another game entirely. The public want renewal sure, but will resist any attempt to fundamentally reform the NHS or planning laws or the triple lock/state benefits ect ect ect. I really struggle to see anyone in the political arena, save perhaps for Jenrick? who has the charisma needed.
Does anyone think, as I do, that the EEC was doing a great job before the interfering bureacrats moved in and wrecked it?
A purely economic treaty was the best of all worlds, and allowed countries to do what they were best at - trade their most desirable goods easily and equitably with other nations and drop the red tape.
Why was that sensible arrangement allowed to be subsumed under the rapidly degrading carcass of the EU, which nobody except Brussels (and a few height-challenged despots) now want?
Absolutely right, David.
I think that the importance of one consequence of that Brexit vote is not generally recognised. It broke the Conservative Party.
David Cameron's resignation the morning after the vote cheered me almost more than the vote itself. Sure, Boris Johnson became Prime Minister eventually, after the Theresa May fiasco. But the squabbles within the Conservative Party over Brexit, which ultimately led to their crushing defeat in 2024, showed them to be hopelessly infiltrated by careerist hacks and social democrats, and to be much more interested in power than in any principle.
The hope for the British Centre-Right is that the Conservatives can go on fading, and be replaced by Reform. That will be a hard struggle, but I wish us good fortune in the wars to come!
All to play for. I still think it's an open question whether the Tories will re-invent themselves. It has happened before.
They are going to need to find a British version of Trump - someone from outside the political establishment. That won't be easy because they'd have to become a politician, get elected as an MP, build up a network, be effective within the party. Trump is a president not a prime minister - he's not first amongst equals is he? He's the capo di tutti capi. We don't have one of those - we have an emasculated monarchy as our capo!
I also think our system discourages mavericks and independently-minded people - it promotes conformists and people happy to work within the system. The civil service needs major reforms to get it back to being politically neutral but how's that going to happen when it has become more powerful that the politicians? The whole shebang simply drains the life out of anyone who tries to change it. Let's be honest, Nigel Farage is really just an establishment figure who doesn't mind saying "wrong" things. Would he really make any difference if he became PM? (which won't happen as long as the Right won't work together).
Excellent point about the differences between our two systems.
An excellent article again David.
My half-Danish wife worked in Italy for 8 years after graduating in 1968. I worked in Italy for 2 years at the end of the 70s in Rieti where we met, married and spent a year in Texas and then a couple back in the UK before I got my dream job on the Cote d'Azur where we stayed for 5 years in the early 80s. My wife got a job back at TI when our youngest was old enough for school too.
We decided to go back to the UK then for the kids' education, but when we retired early in 2004 we sold up in the UK and bought and restored a rustico in the hills near the sea in Liguria and lived there very happily in 2018.
So we have extensive experience of Europe, lived experience too, not just holidays although we had those too and many work trips all over the continent. We both speak French and Italian fluently. My wife can also get by in Danish, German and Spanish and we receive pensions from both France and Italy.
We both voted to leave as we believe that the EU is bad for normal people and it was surprising how many people in our little Italian village congratulated the UK the next day for having the courage to vote no.
We would happily have stayed out there, but our daughter and Italian partner (who she met on holiday with us) moved back to the UK with their 3 children where our other 3 grandchildren were living, so the pull of family and the difficulty of looking after our steep terraced 1 acre garden with dodgy knees brought us back. We miss Italy and France a lot, but go back regularly and don't regret our decision.
We also think Brexit was the right choice even if we haven't taken full advantage of it yet, but the opportunity remains and we can see the regretfully inevitable decline of the EU and think it will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions eventually.
Keep up the good work.
To some extent, we are mirror images around this topic, David.
I took the referendum very seriously, but the question for me was: if we leave Europe, will we open a new political discourse for the United Kingdom...? It seemed to me that if this was not the case, if we did not have the will or the mechanisms to start that new discourse about what it means to be British, that leaving the EU would only be to make small exchanges in our influential oligarchs.
So I voted Remain. But unlike most who did, it did not distress me that the electorate voted to Leave. Indeed, I believe a great many working class people voted to leave just to give the middle finger to David Cameron, and why should they not...?
Then came the Nonsense. And as it exposed the atrocious workings of the EU, mirroring the authoritarian Biden regime in the US, I became glad we had left the European Union. As the EU invoked censorship powers without fear of reprisal, I felt relieved that the UK had at least moved out of this madhouse... even if, as has become abundantly clear since, we had not come close to dismantling our own insane asylum at all.
With unlimited love,
Chris.
Thanks, Chris. Remaining was a perfectly sensible and honourable choice. I never had a problem with Remainers. The real problem was the indefensible attempt to defeat and/or ‘soften’ Brexit after the Leave vote. That radicalised me (with the Nonsense as you call it being in a sense the icing on the cake).
The trouble is, while you and I were engaging with this issue like citizens, the political classes would prefer not to have citizens involved with the messy business of 'governing', as you have shrewdly pointed out here on more than one occasion. 🙂
An interesting exposition of your reasons for voting Leave. You'd be interested in chatting to my neighbour, a retired Oxford philosophy don, who surprised me (as he's an old Leftie: staunch Labour, raises money for Amnesty, etc) by telling me he'd also voted Leave.
My personal reasons were founded on British 'exceptionalism' (in the sense of 'different' not 'superior'). Our status as an island nation giving us fixed and relatively impermeable boundaries; our legal system of Common not Roman-based laws; our economy based predominantly on services, not manufacturing, agriculture or tourism - all of which made us a very poor fit within the EU (particularly as a nascent superstate).
But, of course, the only real reason for voting Leave (as Remainers, with their infallible insight into the minds of Leave voters, repeatedly tell us) is either a desire to rebuild the British Empire, or being racist fascists.
Many "staunch old Lefties" voted Leave. The media characterise the Brexit movement as Right wing, but it wasn't really.
Consider Tony Benn. Or Jeremy Corbyn, or Mick Lynch of the rail union. And also consider that Labour was against EU membership in the 1970s.
Of course Labour love the EU now that they have been taken over by Blairites just as the Conservatives have.
You could make an argument that the EU represents a political structure nestled within the international social democratic consensus. So while we may have left the political structure of the EU we have failed to escape from the international social democratic consensus. And more importantly that broad consensus continues surround us because our own elected leaders cannot think outside that box.
But the world changes. The international social democratic consensus is falling to bits and it would be wise to think that it cannot be restored.
So I voted Leave and hoped for better things. I still do, but it now seems that Brexit was not the stunning result we believed... but just one more step on the road to taking back control.
The EU falling to bits and coming apart at the seams as you say AC. So no wonder clever Keir has taken one look and thinks, ‘Yes let’s have some of that!’.
In all fairness this is nothing new. He’s been trying to overturn the democratic referendum since 24th June 2016.
Good comment.
Thank you for this , as always. Your consistency in outlining the relationship between state and electorate amongst other things, clarifies my own muddled thinking
Thanks Marek!
In the US the ordinary American had their eyes opened by the debacle that ensued under Biden. (The law fare, the political prosecutions, the arrest of parents at school board meetings etc.)This was a necessary awakening. It doesn't matter what the Government agencies tell you is happening if your reality is completely different. Americans are always aware of what their 'tax dollars' fund. A country founded on the principle of 'no taxation without representation' keeps a clear eye of this. Many Americans (not Coastal elites yet) have woke up and didn't like what they see. This has still to happen in UK. State media manipulation has a lot to do with the. (IMO)
It seems to me that we have not lost the war. However people must regain their sense of purpose and be prepared for hard times as we stand up to these Communist thugs who rule us. The Government has decided to to declare a war on us the people. (Can only speak for England) They think we will respond to threats and name calling with fear of being called a 'racist' or something worse (after all they want to redefine a terrorist) with fear and compliance. I hope not.
As an ardent Remainer at the time it was our response to the referendum that 'radicalised' me against the leftishist PMC, best manifested in the 'FBPE' (Follow Back Pro European) thing on Twitter. Sure, I marched for a 2nd referendum, because I was upset. But it became clear that something very undemocratic was afoot and I began to resent the bloody mindedness of my own side, along with its contempt for those who didn't see things our way.
I still think that Brexit was the wrong answer to the wrong question but it also seems clear now that the EU is quite a malign project, albeit with 'good' intentions.
What I cannot forgive or forget is how both sides lied with such impunity. Those clowns Daniel Hannan and Boris Johnson insisting that Brexit did not mean any disruption to trade and the stupid 'sunlit uplands' that everyone with a thinking brain could see are unattainable without significantly more visionary domestic leadership.
I've never received more hate online than when the FBPE crowd decided that I was a 'traitor' and must really hate Europe because I pointed out that the matter was settled, whether we liked it or not. Amusingly I had moved to Normandy by this point, such was my lack of commitment to being a good cosmopolitan (like you, David, with your 'forrin' partner).
These days I think that Brexit was a necessary evil, if that makes sense. It cost me about 20-25% of the life savings I moved here with and none of the ordinary people it was supposed to benefit seem to have so far seen an improvement to their lives. But the more I understand of the EU - behind the mask, as it were - the more I think that it won't be a bad thing if more countries follow suit.
Yes, it's been quite the change of heart.
Makes total sense. In a way we have seen one of the benefits of Brexit in that it has exposed the British political class for the joke that it is. In the 'good old days' the EU was a nice firewall - politicians could hide behind our membership of the organisation and, to a certain extent, rely on it. Now they can't and this has made them more accountable - and we can see the results for ourselves. This I think may be a necessary first stage - clearing out all the dross.
Indeed - and the biggest learning I had was that the 'levers' to limit the impact of migration from eastern European countries were deliberately ignored by our political class of all colours.
A brilliantly thoughtful piece David. I share your feelings about Brexit. We thought we’d won. Twice. First after the referendum, and then after we left five years ago. But our masters have only contempt for our choices. And so it has all been for nothing and we are inevitably going back in under Starmer.
This week I dusted down the very first article I ever wrote for Substack. It’s on the subject of Brexit and the elite’s/deep state’s/PTB’s attitude to it. I’m delighted to say it’s found a new audience. So I share it here if that’s OK.
ATB
https://open.substack.com/pub/lowstatus/p/why-brexit-is-like-playstation?r=evzeq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Great piece. And totally right.
Thank you David!
I’m in almost exactly the same position. The EU always chooses the centralising option: it is the nature of what it is.
"Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart"
Come to think of it, Henry was on a safe bet there. "Depart" - and go where? Wander through the French countryside, full of groups of knights looking for Englishmen to kill? Stop for a meal and a rest at a nice little farm where the locals would cut your throat the moment you dozed off? Ha! Staying for the battle was the safest option by far.
Henry was a very nasty man - check out how he enjoyed roasting early Protestants - but he was no fool.
"Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart. His passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse."
This doesn't sound like wandering around the French countryside, although we're all referring to a play and not actual history.
Boris is a cunt who betrayed us
Erudite and correct.
We are in a constitutional crises and stems back to the Queens coronation and The Blair Witch Project era. The Lords petitioned The Queen in February 2001 over giving Royal Assent to the EU treaty, under article 61 of Magna Carta 1215 as their duty, because no foreign law can superseed our laws. After 40 days (her private secretary did respond but not good enough answer) A61 of MC1215 kicked in 23.3.2001 which sacked Monarch, Courts, Parliament and Commonwealth countries until the people seek redress. Announced in the Times and Guardian the next day and thats the last we heard of it. Blair ploughed ahead with EU. Cameron gave us the referendum cause with 3.5m European voters expected to win and that would have ended our Ancient rights and constution. They hadn't bargained on the people who had never voted before coming out in drones. So Brexit was a con in itself. Hard Brexit left the next day, would have seeked redress. But they invoked A50 which handed EU the rights to us leaving. Which is insane and caused the problems it did. With the Bbc in glee as they had blackmailed Ted Heath into ECC knowling causing Treason and sedition in office. This is the reason that fake King Charles announced WEF Great Reset. 1950 The Stone of Destiny was stolen which is the eyes of God. Queens Coronation was delayed for 18mths whilst they searched for real one and went agead with one that was returned. Look at her Coronation Oath and you'll see it has been forged, signed at top. This is why Blair had the death sentence for treason suspended (Constitutional Law can not get rid of) and there's been no Royal Assent given to any Law since 1951. To get over all this no-one has authority and hence councils, courts, police, mp's and Government are Corporations - Gov is THE DIGITAL POUND FOUNDATION LIMITED registered at Companies House. We have a shadow govt and everything breaking Laws all over the place and commiting Democide via vaxx's, Midazolam and Morphine and poisioning the air, water and food. Population Replacement. You seem to be smart and clued up, research this all you want and please do something about it, cause we're heading for annihilation one way or another
It really is a shame that for all his bluster and flaws, Johnson's time as PM coincided with covid (and the Boris immigration wave of his own making it must be said).
In the early days of his premiership I get the feeling he was happy to let other, more serious people, plan and enact the strategy and he would go and sell it to voters by holding a fish to the cameras or something.
You speak of national renewal, but selling that national renewal is another game entirely. The public want renewal sure, but will resist any attempt to fundamentally reform the NHS or planning laws or the triple lock/state benefits ect ect ect. I really struggle to see anyone in the political arena, save perhaps for Jenrick? who has the charisma needed.
Does anyone think, as I do, that the EEC was doing a great job before the interfering bureacrats moved in and wrecked it?
A purely economic treaty was the best of all worlds, and allowed countries to do what they were best at - trade their most desirable goods easily and equitably with other nations and drop the red tape.
Why was that sensible arrangement allowed to be subsumed under the rapidly degrading carcass of the EU, which nobody except Brussels (and a few height-challenged despots) now want?