Brexit: What Would Patrick Henry Do?

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

With the British general election having only just begun, it would be precipitate for champions of UK independence to bemoan, “Brexit, we hardly knew ye.” Yet as events continue to unfold, it is difficult to maintain the requisite “stiff upper lip” until December 12.

One need look no further for ominous signs ahead than when Prime Minister Johnson went to Buckingham Palace last Wednesday to request the dropping of the writs. “I’ve just been to see Her Majesty the Queen,” Boris announced outside No 10, “and she agreed to dissolve Parliament for an election.”

Yet a BBC reporter outside the Palace confidently told viewers that Mr. Johnson had gone “to inform” the Queen that Parliament was dissolved, as that’s how things are now done. First, the UK Supreme Court overruling the Queen’s prorogation of Parliament in September; and now, a member of the press assuring us that dissolution was no longer among her prerogative powers, either.

So who does rule in the United Kingdom? This question is at the core of the election campaign, as at the heart of Brexit. Since Prime Minister Theresa May brought her Brexit legislation before the Commons a year ago, MPs have been hell-bent on frustrating the people’s will, expressed in the 2016 referendum, to leave the European Union. Boris Johnson called that June 23 Britain’s “Independence Day,” but in reality it’s been more John Dickinson than John Adams.

America’s Founders pledged in their famous document “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” Like Mr. Dickinson who counselled that the time was not yet ripe for the colonies to separate from Britain, the Conservative government is falling back on a weak deal. As many Brexiteers revile it as revere it, as the answer to secession from the EU.

Prime Minister Johnson proclaims it, yet that fails to soothe sceptics, who fear it as not worth the parchment upon which it is written. Hence Nigel Farage’s offer to Boris of a “Leave Alliance,” focussing electoral fire-power against Labor seats in constituencies where Mr. Farage’s Brexit Party enjoys greater popularity than the Tories. The key condition is that Conservatives abandon their deal and concentrate on a “clean break” Brexit.

“Nothing doing,” has come the reply. Ominously, rumors circulate that the Conservative manifesto will drop all mention of a “no deal” Brexit: thus obligating them to continue negotiating a full treaty according to the EU’s whim.

How would Patrick Henry advise misguided Tories? On the eve of Revolution, he warned the Virginia Burgesses of the “insidious smile” with which the British ministry had received the American petitions and declared his own preference: “Give me liberty or give me death.”

So Mr. Johnson must weigh the evidence in favor of a clean break. No smile that America got from Britain two and a half centuries ago was any more insidious than the smirks Britain receives from Brussels.

Britain’s three years’ negotiating with the EU presage as many years or more trying to settle a trade deal, time in which more than £39 billion will be paid without representation. During which the UK would be “encouraged” to accommodate her future regulatory framework to the EU, and all to be adjudged by the European Court of Justice. (It should be remembered that when John Dickinson took account of the inevitability of colonial separation, he resigned from the Continental Congress and enlisted in the war for independence.)

Today were Mr. Farage’s Brexit Party, in lieu of an alliance, to stand a full slate — to honor its commitment to full, untrammeled Brexit — the Tory hold on power becomes more perilous than need be. Boris’s popularity is doubtless no more impervious than Mrs. May’s when she opted for a disastrous snap election in 2017.

Does Mr. Johnson want another minority parliament? Or is he willing to stake Brexit and Britain’s economic future on a Jeremy Corbyn socialist government? What does the lamp of experience, of which Patrick Henry spoke, tell Britons?

A recent poll, disclosing that 70% of Conservative and 81% of Brexit voters want a “Leave Alliance” shows that putting at center stage a “clean break” Brexit is the way forward. For the democratic politician, Boris is presented with the easiest of climb-downs to save face — fulfilling the mandate of the people for true British independence.


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