We all remember George Orwell’s 1984, but it is worth reminding ourselves that one of the great messages he bequeathed was manipulation and disinformation.
Bill Cash fires warning over ‘unfettered sovereignty’ of UK
As Winston Smith discovers, the essential legacy of the Ministry of Truth is carefully calculated untruth. We entered the European Community in 1972 by such means.
Having entered Parliament in that year in a by-election, I was then put on the European Select Committee.
In June 1986, I tabled my sovereignty amendment, which I was not even allowed to debate by order of the House authorities and the Deputy Speaker.
This was because, after a long journey, and substantial support from my constituents, my Association and a small number of valiant MPs, the cause of returning sovereignty to the British people and its Parliament gradually became a revolution in our modern history.
Indeed, when the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill (REUL) passed all its Commons stages without amendment on January 18 2023, I paid tribute to the British people because all this was made possible by them, despite vehement opposition by the Remainers and their cohorts in the Opposition Parties and Civil Service.
That thank you, of course, applies to the Daily Express readers and the support given over all these years.
In 1990, knowing that the Government was about to embark on difficult negotiations leading to Maastricht, I wrote a short pamphlet and sent it round to all Conservative MPs and the Cabinet, explaining what I thought was at stake and how I saw the whole European project undermining our national interest.
We must complete Brexit, says Sir Bill Cash (Image: Getty)
I was immediately invited to No10 by Margaret Thatcher to a lunch with many members of the Cabinet and asked to explain the dangers.
Margaret Thatcher was, of course, usurped that very year and replaced by John Major.
At the same time, I wrote a book entitled ‘Against a Federal Europe’, published in early 1991. The Maastricht Treaty took shape, and in 1993, from a house in Great College Street, I launched the Maastricht Rebellion in the House of Commons with my closest colleagues and founded the European Foundation and the Maastricht Referendum Campaign to support our rebellion against the Government.
We supplied Conservative MPs with essential papers on all the relevant amendments needed, setting out how the Maastricht Treaty was creating European Government and why it had to be fought.
This was followed by the later Treaties of Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon. We did the same each time.
This year of 2023, therefore, marks not only the third anniversary of our leaving the EU but also the 30th anniversary of the founding of the European Foundation, of which Baroness Thatcher became Patron.
During this period, we built on a series of Bills in Parliament seeking a referendum for the very simple reason that all the political parties in Parliament, including the two main front benches, were committed to staying in the EU at any price.
Margaret Thatcher (Image: Getty)
The only way of bypassing this would be persuading the MPs themselves to voluntarily abdicate their right to continue this commitment to the EU by passing a sovereign Act of Parliament, which would enable the voters to make up their own minds on this historic issue.
The fundamental objective of this Referendum was protecting the UK’s sovereignty, which had been abandoned when we entered the European Community. Sovereignty is the right of a nation to govern itself through laws made by its elected representatives in a free democracy. Sovereignty is therefore democracy.
We were induced into entering by the passage of the European Communities Act 1972, which only passed by a handful of votes. This had been preceded by a White Paper which guaranteed that we would retain the veto “in our vital national interest”.
However, it transpires that those negotiating our entry into the EU simply covered up and totally failed to understand the deliberately undemocratic system devised by the legal framework of the European Community, in the making of laws to which we were subjugated.
It is clear that many people are still unaware of the undemocratic law-making processes of the EU, although the people of Northern Ireland, as part of the unfinished business of completing Brexit, know to their cost.
In the EU, laws are passed behind closed doors by majority vote of the Council of Ministers or by forced consensus, in effect collusion, without even so much as a transcript.
Indeed, not one single law since 1972 was ever rejected by our Parliament during the entire course of our Membership. One stark example of this was the Ports Regulation, which was fruitlessly opposed by all the ports employers, trade unions and the then Government, to no avail.
In 2015, we succeeded in our campaign for a Referendum Act and achieved victory on June 23 2016, despite the misrepresentations and lies of Project Fear and the £10m pamphlet. I had a guarantee on the floor of the House that this pamphlet would be impartial – it was not. These dire predictions never materialised.
Then, 28 Spartans voted against Theresa May’s third Withdrawal Agreement. She resigned, and Boris Johnson led the Conservative Party to victory in December 2019, endorsing the Referendum result with the massive majority needed.
No majority means no legislation can be passed, meaning no change. Some of the Parties currently challenging the Conservatives will not even win seats at the next General Election.
Then, Section 38 of the Withdrawal Agreement Act 2020 expressly provided for overriding the Withdrawal Agreement itself and the Northern Ireland Protocol.
There remains unfinished business to complete Brexit.
The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill and the REUL Bill have now both passed their Commons stages without amendment, for which Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak deserve credit respectively.
The passage of the REUL Bill includes its sunset provisions and the removal of the principle of supremacy of EU law and the European Court.
We led the world in our vaccine rollout, saving so many lives because we were not subject to EU law. They even passed a regulation to prohibit the release of these vaccines.
Sir Bill Cash says there remains unfinished business to complete Brexit (Image: Getty)
Similarly, we are now embarking on protecting our children and grandchildren from online harm by passing our own legislation on our own terms, including imprisonment for those knowingly responsible in the tech companies.
Both the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill and the REUL Bill will be attacked by Remainers in the Lords, and the Parliament Acts to override the Lords may prove necessary.
We have been, and continue to be, besieged by Remainers, including highly organised propagandists in the BBC, which it must be noted we pay for, and other media outlets.
But it is also those in high places in the Civil Service, who are increasingly open in their resistance to the democratic will of the British people, as expressed in 2016 and 2019.
REUL was one example of this, but now, we hear, the Prime Minister’s proposals to stop illegal immigration are also being met with such undemocratic obstruction.
This legislation must be comprehensive in ensuring that the courts do not obstruct deporting those claiming to be genuine refugees, but are not.
I am urging the Government with other MPs to use the midterm renewal of the BBC Charter to provide a mechanism for independent decision-making to enforce the legal impartiality requirement, which the Charter currently requires as one of its main purposes, which I proposed to DCMS at the time.
The Remainers are now on the march.
They are permeating the lie that it is Brexit causing our current problems.
The real cause of these is the aftermath of Covid and its cost (said to be more than the Second World War), and Putin’s aggression against Ukraine, both of which are external global factors and emphatically not caused by the Government.
They are the fundamental cause of the increase in the cost of living and are universal.
In the meantime, the democratic deficit now facing Northern Ireland is utterly unacceptable.
Under the Protocol, their citizens are subjugated to direct EU law-making without any veto or scrutiny, unlike any other democratic state in the world.
At present, the Bill, having passed the Commons stages without amendment, is now becalmed in the Lords like the Mary Celeste, with nobody on board.
These negotiations must be concluded on the basis of territorial and constitutional sovereignty and proper democratic law-making for Northern Ireland.
The Remainers need to understand that the British people will never again become governed by 27 EU countries, especially given that the Members of the EU itself, as for example with Italy and Poland, are demanding greater national autonomy.
The removal of EU laws in principle and in practice creates new and exciting opportunities for our competitiveness, new technologies and innovation. We must complete Brexit