An open letter to US Vice President JD Vance
Dear Mr Vance
I was impressed with the speech that you made on February 14 in Munich, which will rank with Sir Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech of March 5, 1946.
Some Europhiles were critical of your speech and would hear nothing against the European Union, with its contempt for democracy and its unelected rulers, and so I am setting out some key points for the record.
A key WW2 Allied objective was to restore the sovereignty of nation states, but on the walls of the museum adjacent to the EU Parliament in Brussels is this quote from Lord Lothian: ‘National Sovereignty is the root cause of the most crying evils of our time . . . The only final remedy for this . . . is a Federal Union of the peoples.’ In other words, as the first EC President Herman Van Rompuy told us, we should expect to see the end of Britain as a nation state, something which Britons had never been asked to vote on.
Indeed, on February 25, 2005, German minister Hans Martin said that the new EU Constitution was the ‘birth certificate’ for a giant super state and ‘a framework for ever closer union’. A number of plebiscites were held in EU countries, as seen below.
Some EU rulers didn’t take no for an answer. For example, on the French referendum (on the EU Constitution) future president of the EU commission Claude Juncker said: ‘If it’s a Yes, we will say “on we go”, and if it’s a No we will say “we continue”.’
Had there been a US-style constitution with a directly elected president, with accountability, a means of impeachment and greater subsidiarity, the UK’s 2016 EU referendum result might have been different. But the majority of the British people voted to leave the EU and take back control as a nation state via directly elected MPs.
As Gorbachev said: ‘The most puzzling development is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe.’
So you might ask why our PM appears so keen to join us at the hip with the EU Titanic, with its contempt for democracy, its one-size-fits-all currency and extensive rules, when he has no mandate to undermine our sovereignty and our freedom of action.
I have drawn his attention to the Privy Counsellor’s Oath, including the words to ‘bear faith and allegiance unto His/Her Majesty and shall assist and defend all civil and temporal jurisdictions, pre-eminence and authorities granted to His/Her Majesty . . . against foreign princes, prelates, states or potentates’. Clause 38 of the Brexit agreement reinforces British Sovereignty and its contravention would be treasonous.
As emphasised to the PM, the British people have never voted to give up their nation state and 544 MPs (84 per cent) voted for a referendum on EU membership, saying that it is for the people to decide.
In 2016, around 408 constituencies voted to leave the EU with a turnout of over 72 per cent, compared with much less at the recent general election. In 2017, 498 MPs voted to invoke Article 50 and a majority voted in a General Election to take back control, with an 80-seat majority for Boris Johnson.
I have asked the PM to assure us that he will respect the decision by the people to take back control and that he will do nothing to erode our hard-won independence.
As you have probably deduced, the UK’s ruling Labour party has much sympathy with the EU’s socialist model and its high level of bureaucracy. Recently we have seen attempts to identify some free speech as too right-wing to be allowed, while ignoring the threat from left-wing anti-Semites and Muslim fundamentalists.
But as you have seen, it is not only your UK cousins who have rebelled against the end of their nation state and the attack on free speech. Those who brand them as populists will not hold back the tide and the flame of freedom that is returning once again across Europe.
So many here are delighted at the advent of MAGA and your contribution to the fight against tyranny.
My very best wishes
Roger J Arthur (author of The Case for Brexit)
