On the morning of the 24th June 2016 many of us who had worked for decades to free the UK from the grip of the EU thought that we saw the light of a new day, where we would once again feel the joy of living in a sovereign, democratic country. However we now see that what we thought was the Sun rising was in fact the first signs of the bonfire of all our hopes, burning the last remnants of our democracy to ashes.
The government's Brexit deal is a total betrayal of our democracy, for future Westminster parliaments will no more govern this country than do the committee of the local tennis club. Where we once were able to throw out those who ruled, if we found them wanting, we now face a future in which our lives will be controlled and directed by the faceless bureaucrats of Brussels, who cannot be removed by any democratic means.
It was said of the soldiers of the BEF in the First World War that they were lions led by donkeys and the truth of this is easy to see when one contemplates the defeatist, and indeed pusillanimous, conduct of Sir John French, the first C-in-C. A similar charge can be laid at the door of the Conservative party in that it has long consisted of sheep, led by swine. While the vast majority of the ordinary members oppose the EU, the leadership since the days of MacMillan has been consistently Europhile, including Margaret Thatcher, whose late road to Damascus did not compensate for the damage she did by signing the European Single Act. These so called leaders bear comparison with Orwell's creation Napoleon the pig, and dictator, in Animal Farm, who always knew that he could rely on the support of the sheep, and of the hard working horse Boxer, whose personal motto was “Napoleon is always right". No matter how stupid, arrogant, incompetent and indeed treacherous a Tory leader may be, the bulk of the Conservative supporters still offers their loyalty, always putting party before country. They are a disgrace.
This nauseating sell out betrays all those who fought and died over centuries to create our democracy. The deaths of the martyrs of Peterloo, the efforts of the reformers of the nineteenth century, the trade unionists of Tolpuddle, and the suffragettes who strived for votes for women will all have been in vain, while those who fell to preserve freedom in two World Wars would have regarded this foul agreement as negating all for which they sacrificed their lives. They did not, as a moron in the Daily Telegraph letter column suggested, die for some sort of European federation, but because they loved their country, the independent, democratic nation which their fore-bearers had spent so long building. One can only imagine what the heroes of the past like Drake, Nelson, Wellington and Cromwell would say about their pathetic successors.
The anguish of the British working class, particularly in the North, will be ignored, as the politicians continue to ride the EU gravy train, and the industrial wastelands continue to decline. Those whose hard work created the industrial revolution, and propelled Britain to the forefront of the world, have seen their industries undermined and sacrificed, while the parasites of the City of London prosper, and they are left with a choice of unemployment, or pathetic badly paid service positions. The fishermen, whose job is the most dangerous of all, have been sold out, as they were by that liar Heath when he took us into the vile organisation in 1973.
We shall lose all respect from others as they see the nation which defied Phillip II, Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler tamely submit to threats from arrogant bureaucrats. We shall be humiliated in front of those who once saw Britain as one of most resolute defenders of freedom and democracy. I am sure that the older generation remember the jokes about Italian tanks having one forward gear, and three reverse. This was always unfair on the brave Italian soldiers who fought in World War II, but who were not the Prussian military robots unleashed by Hitler. The Italians are a lovely people, who for the most part did not share Mussolini's ambitions to create a new Roman Empire, so unsurprisingly displayed little of the martial ardour shown by others. Nevertheless this unfair reputation has lived on as we have often mocked those who appear to surrender too easily. Now we will be seen as too afraid of the overpaid dictators of Brussels to stand up for ourselves, even while under no military threat.
This betrayal will stand alongside Munich as one of the greatest in our history. Its terms bear comparison with those forced on Russia by Germany at Brest-Litovsk in 1917, or those the latter imposed on France in 1940 in the infamous railway carriage at Compiegne. Yet this will be not be as the result of military defeat, but of the treacherous cowardice of our own political class. The latter cannot see beyond the chance to one day be elected to that meaningless talking shop, the European parliament, where corruption reigns, and all one needs to do to reap vast salaries is to toe the federalist line. Even better they might get the opportunity to be appointed a European commissioner, where they can lord it over the common plebs without fear of being turfed out in a democratic election.
The establishment has won. An unholy alliance of bankers, whose greed and incompetence nearly crashed the economy in 2008, big businessmen, who pay themselves obscenely large salaries, while demanding the right to use cheap foreign labour to undercut British workers, bureaucrats who pursue their own agenda, while proving incompetent to administer government policies, and politicians, who were caught out making fraudulent expenses claims, and who only think of their own careers, has succeeded in treating the will of the people with utter contempt, and has discarded the result of the EU referendum, thus destroying both the bright future we might have had as a truly global nation, and indeed our democracy itself. These people are beneath contempt yet we will now be obliged to knuckle under to them and their allies in the EU, although it will really be the latter who will call the tune.
Dr Goebbels himself would have been proud of the lies and propaganda produced by the Remain side, who have missed no opportunity to falsify facts, and attack those wishing to leave the EU as morons, xenophobes or racists, completely ignoring the rational arguments they put forward. Perhaps the most ironic thing is that, as Europe moves further and further to the right, impelled by the anger of the peoples about the policies imposed by Brussels, we shall all end up under the thumb of the actual fascists, who will come to dominate the EU. While the Remainers who benefit from kneeling to Brussels will be celebrating, those who have supported them will eventually experience the full horror of living in a country where the ballot box no longer has any meaning, and they are unable to change, or even influence, those who rule. However they will have made their bed, and must lie in it. Unfortunately so must the rest of us.
Of one thing I am sure. I love European culture, holiday every year in Europe and have many European friends. However I loathe and despise the bullies who have so disrespected my country, and its people, that it cannot but colour my attitude towards Europe in the future. I know that, if Mr Putin should ever be provoked into taking action against the thugs of Brussels, I would not wish to see Britain lift one finger to bail them out as we did in 1914 and 1939. Nevertheless the real hatred I feel is towards the home grown traitors who, for their own personal benefit, have sold out the country. It may be that, in destroying democracy the latter will have opened Pandora's box and a patriotic group, not derived from the current major parties, will eventually take power, and deal with them and the EU, as they deserve. If so it will be a result of their own actions.
If an objective history of this period is ever written, and it will not be in the territories of the new European Empire, future generations will be incredulous that such scum were allowed to betray their country, and that the electorate let them get away with it. Those who now attach more importance to the results of Strictly Come Dancing than they do to any political issue will live to rue the day.
What a way for one of the greatest nations ever to have existed to leave the stage. The last two lines of T S Eliot's poem ‘The Hollow Men', although speaking of the end of the world, can now apply to Britain “This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper“.
We may survive physically but it will be without honour in the world.