At 11pm on December 31st 2020 Britain (and Europe) finally reached the end of an exhausting 4 or more years of preliminary disentanglement.
I say “preliminary dis-entanglement” because, of course, Britain and the various parts of Europe are impossible to “disentangle” after centuries of getting fully entangled with language, culture, custom, business, commerce and so on and those will NOT be being untangled. British people will continue to buy properties in France or Cyprus or Spain for their retirements and European banks and business will be going to London to arranged the various finances they need.
So what has it all been about then?
Sovereignty. In a word. This is something that , reportedly, the Eurocrats really never got to grasp especially their chief negotiator Michel Barnier . There were reports in the British Press that Barnier got exasperated with the British negotiating team always bringing up the very subject of Sovereignty.
And this is, I think, the crucial point in this whole process. It is, to me at least, very amusing that a large part of the British working class and working middle class understood that concept clearly and embraced it. The people who had, and have the hardest time dealing with leaving are the intellectual ‘Snobocracy’ that infest Britain. These are the people on the BBC who agonized over the result of the vote. The same sort that like to order or flame or suggest that everyone should obey the “rules” when they, themselves think the rules do not apply to them.
I think the people of Britain want the final word on what applies to them. And, in the end that is what they have.
Yes, it may well be that Britain will go along with some EU rules – but it will go along with the rules that its own Parliament passes. And, if the British people don’t like it then they can vote those MPs out and change the rules. Without consulting the vast European Bureaucracy.
Sovereignty. It is a big word, it is a mighty concept and it is finally back in the hands of the British People.
Well played Boris. Well played David frost and the negotiating team. And VERY Well played Nigel Farage .