European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

3rd reading & 2nd reading & Committee negatived & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I hope you can hear me this time. It was my fault last time, and I apologise. I was going to say what an honour it was to follow the courageous noble Baroness, Lady Hoey. I warmly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Austin of Dudley, and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish of Furness, on his valedictory speech. The ratio of good sense to words spoken is probably higher in him than in any other Member of the House. We will miss him very much.

The hour is late and much has been said, so I shall digress and take a long view. Whatever your views on Brexit, there is no doubting the peculiar agony of Britain's relationship with its neighbouring continent. Ever since the day, 8,100 years ago, when the sea broke through the chalky gorge between Dover and Calais, there has been a dilemma: are we separate from or close to the continent? If the Strait of Dover had been six times wider, as is the Tsushima Strait between Japan and Korea, I suspect we would never have joined the Common Market, and if there was an isthmus, I think we would never have had a referendum. Britain is close enough to the continent to be repeatedly entangled in continental political systems, but far enough away to repeatedly regret joining them.

Henry VIII’s break with Rome and the events of 410 AD were both a form of Brexit. Of the Reformation, a former Leader of this House, Lord Salisbury, said during the referendum campaign:

“Henry VIII declared independence from the Pope and the Emperor for the lowest of reasons, his lust and his wallet”,


but it

“released this country from its obscurantist shackles and made the industrial revolution and the period of British dominance possible.”

Of 410 AD, the writer and historian Paul Johnson, in his book The Offshore Islanders, written the year before Britain joined the Common Market, argued that by then the British were by then terminally fed up with the “festering incubus” of Roman colonialism. Opportunity came when a barbarian army crossed the Rhine and the Goths sacked Rome itself. At that point, something peculiar happened to Britain. It is a myth that the Romans told Britain it was on its own. Rather, a rebel force of semi-Romanised British nationalists inspired by a British-born theologian, Pelagius, with his heretical doctrine of free will, captured London and other cities, imposed peace and then wrote to the Emperor Honorius requesting legal recognition of their independence. Otherwise preoccupied, the emperor agreed. Johnson wrote this, which I think has interesting echoes:

“There was no provision in Roman law for a territory to leave the empire. But by an ingenious use of the lex Julia, the British got round the difficulty and severed their links with the continent by a process of negotiation.”


Rumour has it that the British negotiator was named Davidius Frostus.

That Brexit did not end so well, although the Dark Ages were no picnic on the continent either. This separation is as historic. It is up to us to make it work by unleashing enterprise, innovation and economic growth.