EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK
Debate between Rachel Gilmour and Andrew Rosindell(3 days, 7 hours ago)
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Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Reform)
I thank the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) for allowing us to debate this issue, 10 years on from the sovereign decision of the people of the United Kingdom to leave a political union—that is the important message that seems to evade most people in this Chamber today. We were not part of a simple trading arrangement: under the Maastricht treaty, which the Conservative Government of John Major signed us up to without a referendum, our sovereignty was handed away to a political union. When my parents voted to join a common market, or to stay in a common market, in the 1970s, that was about free trade; it was about co-operation and working together as neighbours. But over the years it became a political union, and our laws—the laws that we are elected to make—were overridden by a massive unelected bureaucracy in Brussels.
Our trade has to be global—
Andrew Rosindell
A Parliament that had no real power, as the hon. Member knows.
Our democracy and our historic constitutional rights and liberties were gradually being eroded. I want this country to be prosperous. The real prosperity in the world today does not come with a diminishing market in the continent. The global market is there for us to grab if we take that opportunity. Unfortunately, the political establishment of this country has failed in the last 10 years to grab the opportunities that being independent has given us.
Those in the civil service, those in government under Theresa May and the establishment in this country did everything they possibly could to derail Brexit. Under Theresa May’s agreement, we would have been half in and half out of the European Union. That would have been a disaster. Fortunately, the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), myself and others voted against that deal, and gave us a Brexit that actually meant something.
The opportunities are there for Britain to take if we choose to do so. The alternative is to go back into a political union and be subjected to rules, laws, regulations, the euro—all the things that come with being in the European Union—and free movement. If the people of Iceland had the good sense to say no, then we should have the good sense to think of the long-term future of our country, retain our independence, never go back to the European Union, but maintain good relations and trade co-operation with our neighbours.