Stubborn EU Fails To Learn Britain Will Prosper Without It

The great 19th-century Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell once fiercely denounced attempts to limit his country’s ambitions for independence. “No man has the right to fix the boundary of a nation. No man has the right to say, ‘Thus far, thou shalt go no further.’”

- Leo McKinstry -Daily Express Columnist

Yet that is precisely what the European Union is trying to do with post-Brexit Britain. Contemptuous of democracy, intolerant of any challenge to their federalist dogma, the empire-builders of Brussels are determined to thwart our quest for full nationhood by restricting our sovereignty.

That explains why the talks on a trade agreement have stalled so badly. Indeed, after another fruitless summit last week, Boris Johnson said on Friday that the negotiations are effectively over because “there doesn’t seem to be any progress coming from Brussels”.

Ever since the Brexit vote four years ago, the twin aims of the EU’s bosses have been both to punish Britain for its impertinence and to deter any other member state from trying to break the shackles of colonial rule.

SO TO this end, they have sought to make departure as fraught as possible, with endless bureaucratic obstacles, hysterical warnings about economic meltdown, and dire threats of trade barriers. This is despite the fact that Britain is asking for no more than any other independent country with which the EU does business.