The leadership contenders for the Conservatives need to own Brexit, be proud of Brexit and say how government should now use the Brexit freedoms to make us more prosperous and successful.
Brexit is only done in a legal sense, and is still encumbered with an EU Agreement that damages Northern Ireland. So far government has failed to change EU taxes, refused to amend their austerity economic controls, repealed very little of their excessive anti innovation and enterprise regulations, and has stayed wedded to some of their worst net zero, fishing and farming policies. Despite all this our service sector trade has boomed, we have joined the TPP, we are now saving £12 bn a year on contributions and have avoided our share of the huge Euro 800 bn debt the EU is now running up.
If we look at the history Conservatives won a decent majority in 2015 greatly helped by the pledge to hold an EU referendum. Some Conservatives helped secure a decisive win on a big turnout in the referendum, whilst the leadership wrongly backed the losing side and then resigned. Mrs May tried to give us Brexit in name only and lost the majority as a result and from wider misjudgements in her manifesto in the stupid 2017 election. In 2019 Conservatives swept to a big win on the single slogan of Get Brexit done. In 2024 the party playing down Brexit and signing the damaging Windsor framework went down to a huge defeat for that and other related reasons.The failure to change EU economic style controls, the refusal to exercise our new ability to control our borders and bad Central banking led to a big loss of support on the back of an avoidable inflation and real income squeeze.
So history tells us the Conservatives back Brexit or they lose. It is curious that the only one of the 6 leadership hopefuls to have voted Leave, voted against the May sell outs and not supported the Windsor framework is removed first by the MPs. In the next rounds they need to make sure chosen candidates are now proud we can govern ourselves again, and keen to show how we can do so much better if we stop modelling our laws and taxes on a failing EU model. They should start by asking why GDP per head in the US is double the EU average.
It was notable in the last eight years how the most talented and dedicated Brexiteers like David Jones, William Cash, Iain Duncan Smith, Mark Francois, Craig Macinkay, Marcus Fysh and others were not used in Ministerial roles to drive through the benefits we all saw from the freedoms.
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