Observations

At the end of 2020 the United Kingdom finally left the European Union. This must of course be caveated by the fact that the UK left part of it behind (Northern Ireland), it remains bound by a wholly inappropriate ‘Withdrawal Agreement’ and deeply unsatisfactory ‘Trade and Cooperation Agreement’, and it still has to suffer the ignominy of being judged by the highly-politicised European Court of Justice, on which it has no representation.

It therefore seems appropriate to start asking the question: “What did the UK get out of 47 years of membership of the EU?”

As stated above, there are a vast number of ways of looking at a country’s financial performance. We have highlighted one of these, because that is what the EU Commission’s official statistics agency did in its recent report.

By the measure of net financial worth it is clear that the UK did not do well, particularly in comparison to Germany. In fact the UK came seventh-worst out of 28 member countries.

The Remainer Rump

On a side note, we find it interesting that the Remainer rump which is still so vociferous (and frankly unpleasant) on social media seize on any facts relating to the difficulties the UK has had in extracting itself from the EU mess, and they say: “See, Brexit is a disaster.”

What they should of course be asking is why the EU deliberately made it so difficult for the UK to leave and why the UK’s Remainer Parliament spent years trying to overturn the largest democratic mandate in British history. They refuse to accept that Brexit was the solution and that it was the Remainers in the Establishment as well as the disgraceful behaviour of the EU that were the problem.

When it comes to the vile and abusive attacks on us on social media, we would simply say that when people have to stoop that low it is because they have lost the argument. They can’t contest our facts (particularly as most of them come from the EU itself) so they either deflect onto unrelated topics or hurl abuse. It demeans them and it demeans their cause. And those who use foul language to abuse us and our readers should be ashamed of themselves.

The pro-EU lobby hasn't gone away

Below is the Twitter profile heading for (Lord) Andrew Adonis, Chairman of 'The European Movement'.

© Twitter

The message is simple and clear. Andrew Adonis still wants to stop (or reverse) Brexit. Unfortunately this gives oxygen to those who have never accepted the democratic decision of the British people to leave the European Union. In our opinion it might help civilised debate in the country if he told all his followers and the members of the Remainer-Rejoiner movement he chairs not to engage in personal abuse and attacks on people using social media.

The President of the 'European Movement' is (Lord) Michael Heseltine. In June he wrote an article for the European Movement's website entitled: "Brexit Is Not "Done" and Neither Are We". In it he wrote:

"Far from being 'done' Brexit has only just begun.

"We face our biggest fight yet. Five years on from the Brexit referendum, our European community will never stop fighting the government’s harmful plans and making the positive case for a European future for the UK."

Continuing the fight

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