There is no more important task than restoring our right to self government. By the end of the first year of this decade the UK people and Parliament once again will control their laws, money and borders as they wish.
I have every confidence in the people of the UK to make wise choices and to lobby for better government. It has been the people, not their leaders, that have insisted on the UK becoming again an independent country. It will be the people that hold successive governments to account to use the powers well and to spend the tax revenues sensibly.
Once we are fully out we will have more of our own money to spend. Money played an important part in the referendum campaign. Remain forces at home and in the EU have been particularly keen to burden us with as much continuing EU spend as possible to limit the obvious gains controlling our own money brings.
Once we are fully out we can make laws that improve our lives and scrap laws that get in the way. An early candidate for reform and repeal are all the fishing rules that have done so much to damage our fishing grounds. We will be able to raise our standards of animal welfare as we wish. We can have regulations for business which set high standards in ways that allow us good trade with the rest of the world as well as with the EU.
Once fully out we can set our own taxes. We will no longer be subject to losing corporation tax revenues owing to some legal case at the ECJ overturning Parliament’s wishes. We will no longer have to impose VAT on green products and female hygiene goods. We will not have to keep our tax rates within specified bands or at required levels.
The bigger gain will be in our standing in the world. We can become a leading force for free trade through our independent membership of the World Trade Organisation. They would like a major economy to work with them to promote an agenda of freer trade worldwide at a time when the USA is using tariffs and other barriers to trade as a major instrument of wider policy. We will have our own voice and vote in many other international bodies where before we had to accept the EU line.
The UK is well placed to grow faster, to promote democratic and peace loving values worldwide, and to win new friends and influence.
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