On the Record | When Britain Stood Up at Bruges

Please see my latest wire as Brexit diarist for The New York Sun, ‘When Britain Stood Up at Bruges’:

“The shot heard round the world.” That’s how history remembers that fateful day in April 1775 when Massachusetts militia engaged British regulars on the fields of Lexington and Concord in defence of their liberties. Brexiteers recall their own summons to freedom, 30 years ago today: Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges speech.

Mrs. Thatcher’s critique of the European Union’s appetite for power made its mark and sparked a movement. Bruges gave birth to Brexit; its apotheosis, the June 2016 referendum vote whether to regain lost sovereignty or to stay within the EU. “Only” the hard work of negotiating Britain’s secession remains.

So much of the Bruges speech informs the rise of Brexit. And with Britain’s withdrawal from Brussels merely six months away, Mrs. Thatcher’s vision can lay the framework for Britain post-Brexit: “the willing and active cooperation between independent sovereign states.”

Read more . . .

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My thanks to editor Seth Lipsky of The New York Sun.