If the British lion is ever going to roar again then the first step is to chuck Chequers

IT’S time to chuck Chequers.

How in the world did we get here? After the British people voted to leave the European Union we were told “Brexit means Brexit” and that critical “red lines” would guide our negotiations with the EU. So far, so good.

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Fast forward to today and we live in a different world. The so-called Chequers Agreement crosses all those red lines.

We are dancing the hokey cokey with the Customs Union and Single Market, which means restricting our freedom for new free trade agreements.

These, of course, are critical to the national economic success of Brexit. European regulations will remain in force — with no input from the UK. So we stay under the rule of European courts and provide a back door for continued freedom of movement for EU nationals into Britain.

Our laws and courts will not be supreme as Chequers would leave us being run by remote control from Brussels.To frighten us into submission we are spoon-fed a daily diet of tales of food shortages, soldiers in the streets and tailbacks from Dover to Land’s End.

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But the political graveyards are full of people who underestimated the good sense of the British people, the very people who want to be in command of their own destiny and who don’t want to be taken advantage of by the EU.

And don’t forget that despite Project Fear in the referendum, the majority still voted to Leave and the fear-mongering was proven false.

So false that the fear of recession and job losses was met by a growing economy, UK manufacturing output growing at its fastest rate in a decade, exports to the US in 2016 exceeding £100billion — more than twice as much as exports to any other country — and the fact that our economy is worth more than £2trillion and is the sixth largest in the world.

Project Fear was proven false and so will this latest version of fear, which speaks volumes about what the Government thinks of voters — sheep to frighten into the right pen. But sheep we are not.

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I’ve spent the past few weeks meeting party activists, businesses and the public, supporters of Leave and Remain from across the country and the view is that Chequers will give us neither our economic nor political freedom.

Their concerns are simple. There can be no halfway house, where Britain continues to be out of Europe in name but is still run by Europe.

There can be no halfway house when it comes to rule-taking and law-making from the EU, and there is an overwhelming sense of frustration that Britain is being taken advantage of by the EU.

And across the heartlands of the UK this matters, as these people are the ones who have been left behind and who are desperate to take back control of our laws, our borders and our money. There will also be long-term consequences if the largest democratic vote in British history is frustrated.

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We will face a crisis of democracy in which ordinary people will utterly lose their faith and trust in politics and in politicians. The implications for political parties at the polls when they fail to deliver is clear, the public will stop voting for them. We cannot ignore the people.

The Conservative Party could throw away hard-won gains in pro-Leave constituencies across the North East and Midlands if we continue to compromise on the referendum and concede ground to Brussels.

Across Europe we have seen political parties and governments do exactly that and the result is a wave of terrifying extreme forms of nationalism and populism. That is not the British way because when our governments deliver, they deliver for our country and our people.

The time has come for our political leaders to believe in Britain and in the British people. They should abandon the weak-kneed approach and instead play to our strengths. Britain wants to secure a trade deal with the EU and seeks to establish a “strong and special partnership” with them.

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Talk of no deal really means no trade deal, and if the EU fails to reach a free trade agreement with Britain, in the long term we can thrive under World Trade Organisation rules. The UK exports to 111 countries under WTO rules and over the past 23 years this grew at a rate which was three times faster than those exporting to the major EU nations.

We also know that the European Commission, thanks to the many political problems across the European Union, desperately needs British taxpayers to foot the “exit payment” of £39billion to balance its budget.

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And 1.2million EU jobs depend on selling goods to Britain, with London providing much-needed financing to EU businesses. Brexit will not be easy.

There is hard work to do but we are up to the task. We are a free and independent country and will prosper if given a proper chance.

But to let the British lion roar again the first step is to chuck Chequers.

• Priti Patel is a Tory MP and former Secretary of State for International Development.