The People versus the Politicians

In the first in a series of articles reviewing our recent 50th Anniversary annual rally, CIB Chairman Edward Spalton reflects on the present situation of the People versus the Politicians – a theme continued by Lord Stoddart of Swindon, one of CIB’s founders half a century ago. Both Mr Spalton’s introductory remarks and Lord Stoddart’s speech can be viewed in the video below.

According to Mrs May’s promise, repeated over one hundred times, we ought now to have been outside the EU – at any rate de jure – for over a fortnight now. Leaving aside the details of all the dramas since the referendum, the reason is quite simple.

Parliament, having voted overwhelmingly to accept the result of the referendum, is reverting to type and using every excuse and pretext to frustrate the clearly expressed will of the people. Because – quite simply – MPs are overwhelmingly Europhile and think they know better than we do what is good for us – and they are going to see that we get it!

Before the referendum, the late Lord Ashdown expressed his total devotion to the British tradition of democracy:

“I will forgive no one who does not respect the sovereign voice of the British people once it has spoken. Whether it is a majority of 1% or 20%, when the British people have spoken, you do what they command. Either you believe in democracy or you don’t.”

After the result he reverted from the British to the European attitude, as expressed by Jean Claude Junker before the referendums in France and the Netherlands which rejected the EU Constitution:

“If it’s a Yes, we will say ‘on we go’. If it’s a No, we will say ‘we continue’.”

That is ‘democracy’ EU-style, which Mrs May and Parliament are now slyly delivering  to us. We should never under-estimate the political will of the Europhiles. It is known as ‘the Will to Power’ (‘Der Wille zur Macht’) and nothing is allowed to stand in the way of it – not truth, not common decency, and certainly nothing so quaint as the British regard for fairness – a word which incidentally has no equivalent in German!

The arithmetic is quite plain.

By votes:

17.4 million Leave vs. 16.1 million Remain

But by MP:

160 Leave vs. 486 Remain

So, it is the people versus the politicians.

We will be looking forward today from the standpoint of fifty years of CIB campaigning. To right the wrong which was done to us in 1972 when MPs, who had not had a chance to read the terms of the accession treaty, in effect signed a blank cheque in favour of the European project, drawn against the balance in the bank of constitutional freedoms of the British people, accumulated over hundreds of years of increasing, ordered liberty under the law – substituting the Will to Power of an alien institution for our own laws, customs and usages.

One of our founders, who was in the thick of that debate, is with us today. He is Lord Stoddart of Swindon, then in the House of Commons – and I am asking him now to set the scene for us in this next stage of the struggle for a return to our undoubted constitutional rights.

We owe a great debt of gratitude to Lord Stoddart who was  chairman of CIB for twenty three of its fifty years, during which he was ably assisted by the late Sir Robin Williams as Hon. Secretary.