The night Britain left the European Union my beloved country got its mojo back
AFTER 47 years, the UK finally left the European Union – not with a defiant “Up yours, Delors!” but with a softly spoken, “Auf wiedersehen, pet”.
The church bells rang in Norwich and Newcastle and Cardiff and Bristol. Brexit parties were held from Cornwall to Cumbria.
Parliament Square was awash with Union Jacks as Nigel Farage had a beano that he had been planning for 30 years, chucking a metaphorical milkshake over everyone who ever dissed him.
But this was not VE Day.
Where Brexit was celebrated, the mood was one of patriotic pride rather than euphoria unbound.
This was a very British departure — respectful, self-effacing and anxious not to cause offence.
We refrained from sticking up two fingers. We were scrupulously polite.
The UK started life outside the EU with no Big Ben ringing the chimes of freedom, no firework display setting the post-Brexit sky ablaze, no laser show on the white cliffs of Dover.
The big moment came at 11pm rather than midnight — the UK, now as always, a little out of step with our continental cousins in Brussels — so it did not even feel like New Year’s Eve.
By midnight — already 1am in sleepy old Brussels — the party was winding down.
As we left the EU, Downing Street lit up with red, white and blue lasers and an image of Big Ben, complete with a recording of the bongs.
But the door of 10 Downing Street stayed firmly shut as the Prime Minister hosted a private party for staff.
For all the nation knew, Boris could have been having an early night with Carrie and Dilyn the dog.
Downing Street was as deserted as the Marie Celeste.
BIGGEST MANDATE
Here was the strangest thing about Friday night — the total absence of Boris Johnson.
The PM had recorded a speech full of optimistic talk about making Brexit a “storming success” and bringing the nation back together.
But the BBC and ITV both refused to broadcast the speech, as Downing Street aides had refused to let them film it.
So if you wanted to see what the British Prime Minister said about this truly momentous moment in British history, you could not have seen it on our state broadcaster’s channels. UNBELIEVABLE.
The BBC news studio was bathed in Brussels blue, as if in mourning — so censoring Boris felt small-minded, churlish and petty beyond belief.
I strongly suspect that refusing to broadcast Boris’s big Brexit-night speech will turn out to be the beginning of the end for the licence fee.
If the BBC cannot look like a state broadcaster on a night of historic national importance, then it never will.
But we didn’t need the Beeb to tell us that this was history happening before our eyes.
The biggest mandate for anything in British history had FINALLY been honoured. Democracy had triumphed.
After more than 47 years inside the European federalist experiment, the British people were masters of their own destiny once more. And while the national mood on Friday night was respectful for the feelings of the losers, perhaps that was because there is no need for triumphalism when you know you have won.
HISTORIC MOMENT
The clock struck 11pm and Leavers and Remainers were all suddenly extinct.
All those eye-swivelling nutjobs threatening to shove a Brexit 50p coin up their pious rectums in protest no longer seemed like a threat to democracy.
They seemed worthy of pity.
But after all the toxic divisions of the past four years, the wounds will not heal quickly.
The most vicious insult thrown at those of us who dared to vote to leave the EU was that we would all soon be dead. And so it is a bitter irony to reflect that Tony Blair, Michael Heseltine, John Major, Lord Adonis, Gina Miller, Anna Soubry and all the rest will never live long enough to drag us back into the European Union.
At long last, Brexit’s uncivil war is done.
And why?
Because the roots of British democracy run deep.
Once we had voted to leave, it was ultimately unthinkable that we would ever remain — despite the fervent wishes of almost the entire British establishment, from the House of Lords and House of Commons to the civil service, the BBC and big business.
Once the people had spoken, in the end they had to be obeyed.
No parliamentary paralysis could ever stop Brexit. No clever lawyers could thwart it forever.
That historic moment on Friday night felt it had an historic inevitability about it.
British democracy could not be denied. How did the arrogant, out-of-touch establishment ever imagine they could overrule the largest vote for anything in our history?
LOUSY FIT
So au revoir, monsieur, and adios, senor and bye-bye, mein liebe herr. Except — we are not leaving Europe, are we?
We are only leaving the European Union — that unloved, corrupt, expansionist empire.
And the British people have nothing but love in their souls for Europe.
Here’s the great Brexit irony. The British are probably the most pro-European nation on the continent. We revere European culture, drink their wine, holiday at their beaches, cities and moun-tains, eat their fruit, vegetables and cheese and buy their cars.
But the British have always been a lousy fit in the EU.
We do not like having leaders who we cannot kick out.
We do not enjoy unelected old geezers in foreign cities telling us who can and can’t come into our country.
We — one of the oldest democracies in the world, a country that has not been invaded for 1,000 years — truly do not need anyone else to make our laws or to tell us what justice looks like.
The EU just lost its second-largest contributor while the largest contributor — Germany — teeters on the edge of recession.
We should try to be understanding if they sound bitter.
Our stormy relationship with the EU has lasted all my adult life.
The first time I ever voted was in the 1975 referendum, when I girded my flared jeans and enthusiastically voted “Yes to Europe”.
But like my nation, over the course of the decades I fell out of love with the EU.
Like my nation, I began to feel that I had been lied to about what the project really meant.
Like my nation — and around 17.4million of my countrymen in 2016 — the thought of “ever greater union” made my skin crawl. For I believed with all my heart and soul that my great nation’s identity is worth preserving.
Leo Varadkar, the Irish premier, sneers that the UK must “come to terms with the fact that it is now a small country”.
Leo’s line is that the UK is now an isolated little rain-lashed rock, cowering timidly off the coast of the mighty European Union empire.
But it doesn’t feel like we are a small nation today.
It feels like we are a global nation once again, open for business with the world.
It feels like we are the world’s sixth-largest economy, a cultural superpower, a warrior nation with a nuclear deterrent and the best armed forces in the world, the oldest parliamentary democracy on the planet and the longest-reigning monarch in history.
All of that, plus the new added ingredient of post-Brexit va-va-voom.
And in a Europe blighted by fragile coalitions and leaders with feet of blancmange, the UK boasts a popular Prime Minister presiding over the strongest, most stable government in Europe.
CHURCH BELLS
British democracy has a far longer history than the European Union.
If we were a small nation, then we would never have had the guts to leave the EU.
If we were a small nation, then after the EU referendum of 2016, we would have done what all those other EU countries did when they came up with a referendum result that Brussels didn’t like.
We would have voted again, until Michel Barnier put down his cane.
But the UK was always different.
Unlike so many of our neighbours, we have not known the terror of fascism and communism, we have never experienced the jackboots of an invading army on our land, we have never seen our country chopped up by cruel foreign conquerors.
We are a small nation in size but, through the centuries, we have always proved too big to bully.
And what now?
The extremist voices — on both sides of the Brexit debate — will fade away because extremism is never the British way.
Even with a year of transition and haggling about trade ahead, Brexit feels like it is slipping into the history books.
The EU referendum in the summer of 2016 seems long ago now.
MOST READ IN OPINION
But as I recall, all we ever wanted was for our country to be a self-governing, sovereign nation once more and to restore the freedoms bought with the sacrifice of the generations who came before us.
Big Ben was silent on Friday night, but did you hear the church bells ring in all the faraway towns?
That is the sound of a country that just got its mojo back.
- GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL [email protected]