Brexit Day Celebration: They Pushed "Ever-Closer Union" So Far That Great Britain Finally Came Out On The Other Side

Congratulations, Cousins!

"Throughout the nineteenth century, a song ["Rule, Britannia!"] was bolstered by the image of Britannia - still the warrior queen of Roman origins, with Corinthian helmet, Poseidon's trident, and a hoplite shield now sporting the Union Flag. The Victorians gave her another, rawer embodiment of Britain - a lion - to lie at her feet, and discreetly tucked the traditional bared right breast back inside her robes: You never want to go topless when claws like that are around. Britannia was a constant presence in British life for centuries: She walked with every Briton in his trouser pocket, on the ha'penny until 1936, on the white fiver until 1957, on the penny until 1970, and finally on the fifty-pence piece until 2008, when the Royal Mint dumped her in favor of images "reflecting a more modern twenty-first century Britain".

As with John Bull and the old British Lion, it was easier to discard the symbols than maintain what they symbolized."--Mark Steyn

Nigel Farage worked himself out of a job--and couldn't be happier about it!

"I want Brexit to start a debate across the whole of Europe. What do we want from Europe? If we want trade, friendship cooperation, reciprocity. We don’t need a European Commission, we don’t need a European court. We don’t need these institutions and all of this power. And I can promise you, both in UKIP and in the Brexit party, we love Europe. We just hate the European Union. I hope this begins the end of this project. It is a bad project. It isn’t just undemocratic, it is antidemocratic. It puts in that front row, it gives people power without unaccountability. People who cannot be held to account by the electorate and that is an unacceptable structure. 

There is a historic battle going on across the west, in Europe, America, and elsewhere. It is globalism against populism. And you may loathe populism, but I’ll tell you a funny thing. It is becoming very popular! And it has great benefits. No more financial contributions, no more European Courts of Justice. No more European Common Fisheries Policy, no more being talked down to. No more being bullied, no more Guy Verhofstadt! What’s not to like? I know you’re going to miss us, I know you want to ban our national flags, but we’re going to wave you goodbye, and we’ll look forward in the future to working with you as a sovereign..."

Farage was then censored by the chairwoman in her snottiest prison matron voice: "If you disobey the rules, you get cut off. Can we please remove the flags?" Sorry, Madame Warden, but that's a perfect metaphor for why you got Brexit.

Boris Johnson: "This is not the end, but a beginning."

Since the past is prologue to the future, some excerpts from Margaret Thatcher's famous Bruges Speech: 

"Europe is not the creation of the Treaty of Rome.  Nor is the European idea the property of any group or institution. ...

We in Britain are rightly proud of the way in which, since Magna Carta in the year 1215, we have pioneered and developed representative institutions to stand as bastions of freedom. And proud too of the way in which for centuries Britain was a home for people from the rest of Europe who sought sanctuary from tyranny.

But we know that without the European legacy of political ideas we could not have achieved as much as we did.

From classical and mediaeval thought we have borrowed that concept of the rule of law which marks out a civilised society from barbarism. And on that idea of Christendom, to which the Rector referred—Christendom for long synonymous with Europe—with its recognition of the unique and spiritual nature of the individual, on that idea, we still base our belief in personal liberty and other human rights. ...

The European Community is one manifestation of that European identity, but it is not the only one. We must never forget that east of the Iron Curtain, people who once enjoyed a full share of European culture, freedom and identity have been cut off from their roots. We shall always look on Warsaw, Prague and Budapest as great European cities. 

Nor should we forget that European values have helped to make the United States of America into the valiant defender of freedom which she has become. ...

The Community is not an end in itself. Nor is it an institutional device to be constantly modified according to the dictates of some abstract intellectual concept. Nor must it be ossified by endless regulation.

The European Community is a practical means by which Europe can ensure the future prosperity and security of its people in a world in which there are many other powerful nations and groups of nations. ...

But working more closely together does not require power to be centralised in Brussels or decisions to be taken by an appointed bureaucracy. Indeed, it is ironic that just when those countries such as the Soviet Union, which have tried to run everything from the centre, are learning that success depends on dispersing power and decisions away from the centre, there are some in the Community who seem to want to move in the opposite direction.

We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.

Certainly we want to see Europe more united and with a greater sense of common purpose. But it must be in a way which preserves the different traditions, parliamentary powers and sense of national pride in one's own country; for these have been the source of Europe's vitality through the centuries. ...

Of course, we want to make it easier for goods to pass through frontiers. Of course, we must make it easier for people to travel throughout the Community. But it is a matter of plain common sense that we cannot totally abolish frontier controls if we are also to protect our citizens from crime and stop the movement of drugs, of terrorists and of illegal immigrants.

...And certainly we in Britain would fight attempts to introduce collectivism and corporatism at the European level—although what people wish to do in their own countries is a matter for them. ...

It is not a problem of drafting. It is something at once simpler and more profound: it is a question of political will and political courage, of convincing people in all our countries that we cannot rely for ever on others for our defence, but that each member of the Alliance must shoulder a fair share of the burden. ...

But let us never forget that our way of life, our vision and all we hope to achieve, is secured not by the rightness of our cause but by the strength of our defence. On this, we must never falter, never fail. ...

However far we may want to go, the truth is that we can only get there one step at a time. And what we need now is to take decisions on the next steps forward, rather than let ourselves be distracted by Utopian goals. Utopia never comes, because we know we should not like it if it did. 

Let Europe be a family of nations, understanding each other better, appreciating each other more, doing more together but relishing our national identity no less than our common European endeavour. Let us have a Europe which plays its full part in the wider world, which looks outward not inward, and which preserves that Atlantic community—that Europe on both sides of the Atlantic—which is our noblest inheritance and our greatest strength." .......

To be sure, Prime Minister Thatcher was an internationalist. But she was also a patriot, a realist, a conservative, an anti-communist, a student of history and a Christian--all of which made her "strike out against what I saw as the erosion of democracy by centralization and bureaucracy, and to set out an alternative view of Europe's future."

"Let’s now celebrate the meaningfulness of Brexit. It really cannot be overstated. Brexit is one of the finest acts of democracy in the history of this nation. It ought to take its place in the history books alongside the Levellers’ demand for universal male suffrage in the 1640s, and the mass march for democracy in St Peter’s Field in Manchester in 1819, and the Chartists’ agitation for the right of working-class men to vote in the 1840s, and the civil disobedience of the Suffragettes in the 1910s… Because Brexit, and, more importantly, the post-referendum battle to protect Brexit from the anti-democratic elites, shares something incredibly important in common with those democratic leaps forward in British history. Which is that it embodies the patient but determined assertion of ordinary people that they have as much right as the rich and the well-educated to determine the political fate of the nation."--Brendan O'Neill

I think she would approve. I know she would. #MGBGA!

Like the Perma-Coup Here, It's Not Over Yet--UPDATE:

"In recent weeks Boris Johnson appears to only be focussed on agreeing a new trade deal with the EU. While this is important, trade should not be the only thing up for discussion in any future agreement reached which would replace the Political Declaration. If our future negotiations become too narrowly focused, other areas may slip through the net, allowing the EU to tie the UK into levels of regulation from which we should be free."

"It may take a few more doses to get all the germs..."