Brexit isn’t about limping towards the exit – it’s about marching through the door to freedom
Sometimes, watching our Government in action, I have doubts we will ever be free of the European Union.
It’s like watching a troupe of dwarves wading neck-deep through treacle.
The negotiations come and go, the embittered Remainers over here shriek with anger and the EU bureaucrats dribble out spite to the press. They say our Prime Minister is useless and David Davis is useless and nobody knows what’s going on.
And our Prime Minister — who wanted to stay in the EU, remember — is always on the back foot, her party divided. We run the risk, then, of losing the argument.
But at last there’s a reason to be cheerful. Our Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, has just made the best speech of his political career.
About time, you might say. But it was a very good speech — full of positivity about Brexit. About what every one of us has to gain from leaving behind the fractured, costly, undemocratic and relentlessly expansionist European Union.
Brexit is “the expression of a legitimate and natural desire for self-government of the people, by the people, for the people,” he stated.
It wasn’t Britain turning its back on Europe, Bojo added. Far from it. We are still Europeans. Nothing will destroy our links with our neighbours.
Indeed Johnson suggested we should strengthen our links with France.
We’ll still take our holidays in Europe, if we want to. We will trade just the same with our continental partners. We are still European.
But — and this is the important point — we are also global. We can look forward to greatly improved trade with the rest of the world. With the US, with the Commonwealth countries, with China.
We will no longer be hamstrung when we want to sort out our own deals with the rest of the world. Brexit isn’t about being insular — quite the reverse.
He’s dead right. In the last week or so the Australian High Commissioner here, Alexander Downer, has told us to stuff being part of the EU customs union, as many Remainers want.
Stay free, he said, writing in The Sun on Tuesday.
That way we can strike a good deal with you on trade.
That was a welcome intervention from a true ally.
There’s so much to be positive about. Employment is up, inward investment is up. Our firms are doing very well.
Did you know that since the Brexit vote, Chinese investment in the UK has more than doubled? It now stands at more than £15billion.
The Chinese — the future, economically – don’t have much time for the EU and its restrictive practices.
And German exporters are desperate to strike a deal on trade — our market is crucial to them.
They don’t want us “punished” for daring to leave an autocratic and incompetent institution.
These are the sorts of points our Government should be making over and over again.
Rather than limping towards an exit from the EU as if Brexit were something regrettable which the people voted for and so, alas, we’ve got to do it.
It’s time the rest of the Government followed Bojo’s lead and started championing how good Brexit will be for us all.
In June 2016 the British people made a bold decision, and the right decision.
Let’s hear the Government exult a little bit more and whine a little less.
HERE’S a truism.
The bigger the charity and the more pious it sounds, the more likely it is to waste your money and abuse the people it is supposed to be helping. They don’t come much bigger than Oxfam.
It swallows up hundreds of millions of pounds from the Government. And from your donations.
And as I pointed out a few weeks ago, it spends that money on huge salaries and making adolescent pronouncements on capitalism. While its workers are holding orgies with whores in disaster zones.
Not a penny more to these people. Ever.
Night in with Sara
VALENTINE’S Day! And where’s the wife?
Gone on a cheap skiing break to Slovenia.
So I made a romantic dinner for the dog instead – and spent the rest of the evening looking at agreeable photos of model Sara Sampaio.
She seems like a nice young lady, doesn’t she? I hope she got my Valentine’s card.
“Roses are red, panthers are black, now whip off that G-string and get in the sack.”
PUZZLE of the week.
Customers have been complaining that some Quorn meals have contained bits of rubber.
How could they tell? It tasted slightly better than usual?
I’ve tried Quorn. During my regular attempts at being a veggie.
Last time I gave up after two mouthfuls and used the rest to grout the bathroom tiles.
Nuclear spy is a Geck-007
OH no! The Iranians have blown our cover.
A senior military adviser to the country’s government has revealed what we’ve been getting up to.
Hassan Firouzabadi says the West is using LIZARDS to spy on Iran.
He says their skin attracts “atomic waves”.
They are used to find out where Iran’s nuclear sites are located.
I don’t know what “atomic waves” are. Nor does Hassan. And nor do any lizards I’ve met.
One undercover lizard working for the CIA told me yesterday: “Bud, I’m tellin’ ya – these ’Ranians are crazier than a s**thouse rat.
“Upside is, there’s a lot of flies around.”
[boxout featured-image="5580628" intro="ACCORDING to a top gynaecologist, the first question women always ask is: “Does my vagina look normal?”"]I assume the bloke always says yes, so the babes don’t feel bad.
Rather than saying: “Christ alive, you’ve got a right dog’s breakfast down there, love.” That’s what I’d do, anyway.
Unless it had two rows of sharply pointed teeth and growled when you approached it.
Then I might have a word. Maybe recommend some surgery or at least exorcism.
As it happens I’m a retired gynaecologist. But I still like to keep my hand in.
Ba-DOOM.
[/boxout]
Pets the priority
THERE’S a lot that’s good in Labour’s manifesto for animals. Best of all is banning eggs produced from caged hens.
But the stuff about our pets may make life worse for a lot of animals, especially dogs.
Labour wants to force landlords to take pets, for example.
Well OK, but only if the house is suitable – i.e. if it has a garden. And there’s enough room inside.
We should be making it more difficult for people to keep dogs. So that they are not let loose to run riot.
And can be guaranteed a certain amount of exercise every day, and a decent life.
WESTERN forces have just killed an estimated 200 Russian fighters in Syria.
So far as I can make out, the Russkies were supposed mercenaries fighting for Syrian government forces.
The Yanks, meanwhile, are fighting for the Syrian rebels. But not the head-chopping jihadi maniac Syrian rebels. We’re against them, sorta.
Oh, and we’re alongside the poor old Kurds. And so kind of against Turkey.
What a foul and ghastly mess. How much better off would the Middle East be if we all just got the hell out of there and left them to it?
Because we always make things worse – and this could spiral out of control.
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Sat with baby? I'd cry, too
I WOULD hate to come across as an unpleasant person. Not me at all.
But, um, did anyone else feel just the teensiest bit of sympathy for the woman kicked off a flight when she complained about being sat next to an eight-month-old baby?
And its smug “My Baby First” mum?
I suppose most of us would say nothing and just sit there. Our ears bleeding from the continual screeching.
And our jackets covered with the occasional squirt of breast milk. More fool us.