On the Record | Contra the Remainers, Britons’ Right to Liberty Justifies Brexit

Please see my latest wire for The American Spectator, ‘Contra the Remainers, Britons’ Right to Liberty Justifies Brexit’:

British parliamentarians returning to work this week will be thrust immediately back into the Brexit fray. Tempus fugit, as the Romans say, and with the October 31 deadline for leaving the European Union mere weeks away, there’s no time to lose in the debate over whether or not Britain will achieve its independence.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to ask Elizabeth II to prorogue Parliament from September 11 (the likely start date) to the Queen’s Speech on October 14, so as to clear the political calendar for domestic business, has excited the expected howls of protest. But as Westminster was scheduled to be in recess anyway for the parties to hold their annual autumn conferences, it is likely no more than four or five days will be lost to Brexit mayhem.

No matter. While anti-Brexiteers outside Parliament are searching for ways to stop Boris’s prorogation — an unlikely event, given conventions dealing with royal prerogatives and the unwillingness of the judiciary to cross the line into the jurisdiction of the purely political — inside Parliament the usual suspects are preparing legislation to force the Government, in lieu of reaching a withdrawal deal, to ask the EU for yet another extension to the end of January 2020.

If anti-Brexiteers are successful in passing legislation forbidding Britain to leave on WTO terms — “No Deal” — what is the Government to do? MPs critical of Brexit plead they act in the spirit of British democracy. They are wrong. Their machinations in favor of the EU are in direct defiance of the people’s referendum vote three years ago to exit.

These shenanigans in the House of Commons pervert its historic role to hold the Executive to account, whether in the form of an “absolute” monarch or a prime minister leading a cabinet government. But the aim of the Commons has never been to usurp and abrogate authority to itself in defiance of the party in power.

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Remarks are welcome on DMI’s Facebook page.

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My thanks to editor Wlady Pleszczynski of The American Spectator.

On the Record | Bumpy Ride Lies Ahead for Brexit

Please see my latest wire as Brexit diarist for The New York Sun, ‘Bumpy Ride Lies Ahead for Brexit’:

As Westminster politicians prepare to resume their Brexit deliberations next week following the summer recess, one can only quote the inimitable Bette Davis: “Fasten your seat belts; it’s going to be a bumpy night.” Only in the case of Brexit, many more bumpy days and nights before October 31 and Britain’s exit from the European Union becomes finalized.

Britons and the world witnessed an amazing about-face once Theresa May left office and Boris Johnson assumed the mantle of Prime Minister. Brexit was no longer treated as an embarrassment and a regret. Brexit became an opportunity, a chance for a British renaissance.

No wonder. Boris, after all, claimed that the 2016 referendum to regain Britain’s sovereignty was in reality its own “Independence Day.” He is, to all those in thrall to the EU, their worst nightmare. Gone is Mrs. May’s supplication to Brussels officialdom and her intransigence to Britons’ desire for self-government.

Britain’s indefatigable paladin is now “in the house” — 10 Downing Street.

Boris’s vow to bring Britain out of the EU on October 31, “do or die,” deal or no deal, was the ultimate insult to EU votaries whose outsized self-assurance can brook no resistance. Certainly not from a mere Prime Minister — nor to the people’s cause of self-government whose champion Mr. Johnson became.

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Remarks are welcome on DMI’s Facebook page.

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

On the Record | Boris and Manchester United

Please see my latest wire for The American Spectator, ‘Boris and Manchester United’:

It was a stroke of genius for Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, to begin his Brexit roadshow to talk up Britain’s “new golden age” in Manchester.

The city’s name serves as a metonym for free market economics: “Manchesterism.” It became so closely identified with laissez-faire that Pius XI referred to it in his 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno. “Manchesterian Liberals,” Pius tut-tutted, hold the inimical view that “whatever was produced, whatever returns accrued, capital claimed for itself, hardly leaving to the worker enough to restore and renew his strength.”

Economic historian W.D. Grammp, noting this pejorative continued into the 1960s, called the Manchester School “a policy that relies on the market as much as it can and (even to today’s classical liberals) somewhat more than it ought.”

Such was not the original intent of its founders, Richard Cobden and John Bright, who were focused in the mid-1840s on repealing the Corn Laws, legislation that protected British landowners from cheap foreign wheat, a competitive advantage that made bread unaffordable for the working poor. Instead, Grammp observed, Manchesterism “had much less to say about the principle of economic freedom than about the likely effects of its practice in foreign trade.”

Mr. Johnson steps into this breach, for he is intent on emphasizing how Brexit leads to greater freedom and prosperity for both individuals and the nation. Call it “leveling up.” Instead of the redistributionist policy whereby equality is achieved through less for everyone, free market innovation and entrepreneurship expand both opportunity and the economic sphere.

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Remarks are welcome on DMI’s Facebook page.

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My thanks to editor Wlady Pleszczynski of The American Spectator.

On the Record | Can BoJo’s Mojo Carry Brexit Forward?

Please see my latest wire for The American Spectator, ‘Can BoJo’s Mojo Carry Brexit Forward?’:

At last! Brexiteers may be forgiven the renewed spring in their step. When Boris Johnson climbs to the top of Disraeli’s “greasy pole” this week — leader of the Conservative Party Tuesday; Wednesday, prime minister — he will achieve the pinnacle of any British politician’s career. With courage and fortitude, the next premier will reciprocate for his country: Taking the United Kingdom out of the European Union.

President Trump characteristically took to Twitter to “congratulate” Mr. Johnson as the incoming “Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.” The President tweeted about Britain’s Donald Trump: “He will be great!”

It tempts fate to quote William Wordsworth in anticipation of Britain’s independence from Brussels. “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,” the poet enthused. “But to be young was very heaven!”

This is especially apt because Wordsworth wrote his paean in praise of the French Revolution. History records that sad tale of murder, plunder, conquest, and ruination.

Happily, Brexit is the counter-movement to what the European Union has spawned. Its aims include restoring to Britons political rights outsourced to the Continent. Border security. Regulatory responsibility. Trade flexibility. Self-government.

Parliament will be the beneficiary of sovereignty regained. Moreover, if the Brexit dream is to be fulfilled, its promise must spread farther than the debating chambers of Westminster.

For British independence means nothing if it does not include the bulwark of the United Kingdom, the people themselves. More personal freedom, less government action — which means lower taxes, reduced spending, further decentralization, and, ultimately, more power for individuals to innovate and trade and associate.

“Liberty is not a means to a higher political end,” Lord Acton wrote. “It is itself the highest political end.” At the moment, Brexit is the thing without which all other aspects of British freedom are held at bay. Thus, Brexit first.

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Remarks are welcome on DMI’s Facebook page.

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My thanks to editor Wlady Pleszczynski of The American Spectator.

On the Record | Anti-Brexit Britons Turn on the Queen

Please see my latest wire as Brexit diarist for The New York Sun, ‘Anti-Brexit Britons Turn on the Queen’:

Could Queen Elizabeth II become a pawn in the Brexit drama? In their latest bid to frustrate Britain’s independence from the European Union, Remainers are rumored to be considering enlisting Elizabeth II as an envoy to Brussels “to plead” for delay.

So reports Breitbart London in respect of the most recent plot to stymie Britain’s exit from the grip of Brussels mandarins. Three years since a clear majority voted to leave, efforts to betray the will of the people and remain subservient to the EU grow more desperate as the “latest” exit date of October 31 nears.

That new leadership is due in Downing Street only heightens the likelihood that Britain will be out, come Hallowe’en. That the incoming premier will ask the Queen to end — or prorogue — the current Parliament and thus ensure Brexit doubtless contributes to this competition for royal favor.

Is the irony lost on no one? Britons’ principal reason to leave is based on the EU’s growing appetite for power, morphing into a “super-state,” evolving its own prerogatives, betraying the original plan to pool together sovereign European states for limited projects of mutual benefit.

Of those powers Brexiteers want to claw back, top of the list is Britain’s ability to craft its own regulatory parameters, negotiate trade deals, oversee border security, and legislate free from Brussels oversight. To wit, to restore sovereignty to Westminster and, not so incidentally, the Queen.

After all, she is the United Kingdom’s “Head of State.” All laws are enacted in her name. Her ministers swear fealty to her. Her “subjects” send representatives to Parliament to help her govern the nation.

Even Boris Johnson would — if he does, as seems likely, emerge as the next Conservative prime minister once leadership ballots are counted early this week — visit Buckingham Palace to receive his appointment as Elizabeth’s “first minister” and “kiss hands” with his sovereign.

Brexit would be no less a victory for Britain’s constitutional monarchy than for the British people. The Queen was never more a mere “figurehead” than when ultimate responsibility of key national issues was decided far from Albion.

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Remarks are welcome on DMI’s Facebook page.

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