DANIEL HANNAN AGAIN

Daniel Hannan has written a piece for The Spectator (HERE) claiming that after Brexit "Britain will be boss again".  He says the EU is different to every other international body in that "it presumes to legislate for its member states".

He talks as if Britain was under forced occupation by the EU.  To suggest it presumes to legislate for us is like saying Whitehall or the UK civil service presumes to legislate for us.  The EU commission (the civil service) acts under the direction of the European Council (Theresa May, Angela Merkel, etc) and laws are voted on the European Parliament (Mr Hannan among others).

In other words it behaves exactly like every other democracy.  And moreover, in the vast majority of instances the UK votes with the winning side.  On a very small number of occasions (about 70 out of 2500 I believe) we are defeated and have to accept the will of the majority.  But this is the very essence of democracy.  If you need to be on the winning side 100% of the time democracy is no good you need dictatorship.

The vote on 23rd June, he says, is to "restore Britain's political independence" but what does this mean?  I think he would agree it means the supremacy of parliament - but parliament has a substantial majority to remain inside the EU!  Ergo, once we are independent we could decide to immediately reapply for membership of the EU and I assume Mr Hannan would then begin to campaign to get us out. This is insanity.  

I have always thought it is the quality of the decisions made rather than who makes them or where they're made.  For him, the opposite is true.  And while no doubt the EU has made poor decisions so have UK governments. We don't have a monopoly on wisdom in these islands.

He thinks it is important to "simply" repeal sections 2 and 3 of the 1972 European Communities Act - the sections that give precedence to EU law.  This wouldn't have any impact whatsoever on any existing law except when it was being appealed when (I assume) the UK Supreme Court would have the last word instead of the ECJ. But in many cases the UK court will come to the same finding as the ECJ.  So we are talking about a few cases out of a vanishingly small number where some fine legal argument is determined differently by British judges.  What a price we shall have to pay for this.