The title of this posting is undoubtedly a cliche, but unfortunately, for those of us who fought for so long to free our nation from foreign dominance, to restore the ancient freedom of free speech we once enjoyed, and to put an end to the arrogance of the liberal elite, it appears it may prove only too true.
When the result of the 2016 EU referendum became clear we rejoiced that, despite being opposed by all the so called great and good, the politicians who treated the ordinary people with contempt, and a media, particularly the BBC, dominated by those who supported them, we, who had walked the streets, and never given up, had triumphed.
We had driven back the tide of bureaucratic control, emanating from Brussels, which promoted a massively growing increase in this country, restored our right to hold those who ruled the nation democratically accountable, making it impossible for the MPs to shuffle off responsibility by claiming that they could not oppose the Brussels bureaucrats, while putting the Civil Service once more firmly under the control of elected representatives.
And then. In Kipling’s famous poem “The Road to Mandalay” there is a line “An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!”, but this time it was not the dawn but a foul virus, originating, either by accident or design, in a Chinese laboratory, or one of their filthy wet markets, which crashed like thunder across the entire world, spreading a pandemic which disrupted the entire human race.
We are all aware of the effects this disease had had on the UK, but perhaps one of the most significant is due to the fact that our newly elected Prime Minister, an optimistic, patriotic man, who was immensely popular, nearly died. Although he survived it is obvious that he has been badly affected by his brush with death, the old Boris having been replaced by a man much more unsure of himself, and susceptible to being guided by those he would once have dismissed as weak wallies.
Many of us who fought for freedom from the EU over decades are a little ambivalent about Boris. He was not with us when we walked the streets delivering leaflets, or held meetings putting the case for leaving the EU at various by-elections over the years. However we were aware from the early years of UKIP that he had sympathy with our views, and eventually he did put his shoulder to the wheel. His position as a significant politician was immensely helpful, and he stuck to his guns through the referendum, and the subsequent elections so he does deserve our thanks.
Now however he is showing a timid side, which risks allowing the Remainer elite to reverse much of which Brexit has achieved, and will achieve, if the UK defies the nay sayers, and tells those such as Macron to get lost. Written in 1845 the poem by Robert Browning, ironically titled ”The Lost Leader” contains a famous line “Never glad confident morning again!”, and this is how many of us feel as we watch the promise of 2016 being undermined, and the irreconcilable Remainer bureaucracy seeking to force us back onto our knees to Brussels.
In the first days of the pandemic the government was operating without a clear map as to how to proceed, so it is understandable that they reacted in the way they did. Now however we have a population in which some eighty per cent have antibodies to the virus, and the daily death toll is less than the number killed on the roads. Covid is not the bubonic plague, the number having died is less than those who died in the 1957 flu epidemic, while the 1968 flu killed 80,000 in the UK without any lockdowns being considered.
However, as hopefully we near the end of the crisis, the choice of those supposedly advising the government, such as some of the members of SAGE, is questionable. One professor from UCL, who sits on this body, has been reported as saying that certain restrictions should be maintained indefinitely, yet this woman is a member of the Communist Party of Britain, which aims at “a revolutionary transformation of society to end capitalism, creating a socialist state of Britain”. She has also praised China, the cause of the pandemic, and the oppressors of the Tibetan and Uyghur peoples, as “a socialist, collective system, not an individualistic, consumer-oriented, profit-driven society badly damaged by twenty years of failed neoliberal economic policies”. As we know the idea of a totalitarian government, ordering the population about, is one which Communists love, so a desire to unnecessarily extend controls is something those like this professor would probably support for political reasons.
In addition, since the time of the Russian revolution Communism has been responsible for more than one hundred million deaths around the world, oppressed half of Europe for nearly fifty years, and created a slave state in North Korea, while reducing nations which tried it to penury. Only the wilfully blind could look at this record, and yet still support the system. All this must beg the question of why so many of those paid to advise the government, and to educate our young are quite happy to declare themselves Marxists, and allowed to hold positions as dons at all universities, but particularly Oxford and Cambridge. Did we not have enough of these people in the days of Philby and his accomplices?
Incidentally it is now obvious that those who naively believed that females are more moderate, and tolerant, than men, have been proved quite wrong. Many women in public life have shown themselves to be extremists, not least in the church where the female Bishop of St Davids was forced to apologise after she tweeted that readers should ‘Never, never, never trust a Tory’.
Those of us who worked so long to restore the country we knew before Covid, ‘woke’ lunatics, and climate change obsessives, one can only paraphrase Shakespeare’s Mercutio, and say "A plague on all your houses”.
The alternatives to Boris would be disastrous, either a Labour party dedicated to making us once again servants of Brussels, or a Conservative from that part of the party which took us into, and kept in, the EU in the first place. He must rediscover his optimism, and overrule the politically motivated scientific Cassandras who would never agree to restore full freedom to the people, while defying the EU over Northern Ireland, ideally pulling us out of the massively flawed withdrawal deal. If he does not then we shall indeed snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
