Why we voted leave

On 23rd June 2016 17.4 million voters told Parliament we should leave the EU.

Leave voters voted to take back control.

We voted to take back control of our money, our laws and our borders.

We voted to be a sovereign people again.

The overarching aim is to restore our freedoms

To become self governing as we used to be

We wish our Parliaments to frame our laws

To levy and spend out taxes

To make our borders safe

To award the precious gift of citizenship to those we choose to invite

We did not vote in the belief that future Parliaments will always be wise

Nor that they will always get it right

We voted to restore powers to Parliament because it is our Parliament

We can lobby and influence it

We can dismiss it and replace the MPs when they no longer please.

I find it surprising that some find it difficult to understand this overriding wish

For it is based on our long standing pursuit of freedom

It springs from our history

The history of the UK is the story of the long march of every man and every woman to the vote

The story of asserting the rule of law against all, however mighty.

We prize the gift of freedom under the law for all on an equal basis

We share an aversion to slavery

A dislike of military rule

A resistance to arbitrary government

A rejection of the patronising errors of elites

A distaste for overmighty bureaucracies cramping our freedoms

A belief that we should be free to do whatever we please unless the laws prevents it

The signposts to democracy run through Magna Carta to the first Parliaments

From the 1660 settlement to the Glorious Revolution

From the Great Reform Act to the triumph of the suffragettes

We carelessly lost some of these freedoms,

casting away much of the power of our vote and voice

by passing powers to the European Union

We allowed the EU to impose laws we did not want

To levy taxes we disagreed with

And to spend our money as they saw fit

Brexit is designed to recall those lost powers