Boris gets Brexit done!

The Prime Minister has achieved the impossible

Like many a tragic politico, I have spent much of the bank holiday weekend trying to absorb the emerging details of the Anglo-European trade deal. What the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has achieved is little short of a ‘Christmas miracle’!

After months of heckling about the alleged disappearance of the ‘oven-ready deal’, as Remainers willfully conflated the trade deal with the Withdrawal Agreement that Boris had already got signed, sealed and delivered (leading to our formally leaving the EU back in January), the PM has once again achieved the thing his detractors confidently pronounced was ‘impossible’.

We were told, repeatedly, that it was impossible to do a trade deal with the EU in the time available and that we could not ‘have our cake and eat it’. Not only has the PM and our chief negotiator, Lord Frost, done just that, they have delivered a deal that, by my reading, delivers on all the key aspirations of the Vote Leave campaign in 2016 and all that was promised by the Conservative Party at the 2019 General Election, allowing us to take back control of our money, borders, law, territorial waters and trade policy, but is also the first ever free trade agreement based on zero tariffs and zero quotas. This is fantastic news for families and businesses in Billericay East and across the whole of the United Kingdom. It is also the biggest bilateral trade deal signed by either party, covering trade worth £668 billion.

As I said in my previous blog, my red line was Brussels’ attempts to keep us locked into EU regulation, enforced by the European Court of Justice. This deal guarantees that we are no longer bound by EU rules and there is no role for the ECJ. It has been poured over by the Brexit Spartans in the European Research Group of Tory backbenchers, and their ‘star chamber’ of Brexiteer lawyers, and they are advising their members to support the deal. Even Brexit headbanger Nigel Farage has hailed it a success. It does, finally, feel as though this issue has been put to bed and we can move forward as a country. This means that from 1st January 2021, the dream of my lifetime will come true – the UK will have full political and economic independence. I could not be happier or more proud to be British, and a Conservative.

This is another huge personal achievement for Boris Johnson. Those who cast their minds back to the Conservative leadership election in 2019 will recall that, whilst I backed Boris, I was not by any means a completely uncritical fan of his but I was convinced that he was the man to get this done. Indeed, notwithstanding the doughty efforts of Lord Frost, the decisive factor does seem to have been the personal intervention of the PM – almost at the eleventh hour – and the personal rapport he was able to build with Ursula von der Leyen (no mean feat considering her father, the late Ernst Albrecht, was one of the original EU bureaucrats).

As I have said before, when the history of all this comes to be written and, better still, dramatised on Netflix, it will make for fascinating reading and probably a cracking bit of telly. The episode on the ‘Christmas truce’ hammered out over cold pizza and Zoom between Mr Johnson in Downing Street and Frau von der Leyen in Le Berlaymont will doubtless be particularly gripping.

By a strange coincidence, I recently posted on my Twitter feed my Top Six Conservative Leaders of all time (with the late Baroness Thatcher occupying the top spot, naturally). Initially, I had in sixth place the late Earl of Stockton (better known to history as Harold Macmillan). With this deal, in my estimation, Boris has displaced him. I now rank Lord Stockton at No. 7 in my personal pantheon of Tory heroes, and Boris edges him out at sixth place, just behind Sir Winston Churchill. To my mind, this trade deal is a personal and political triumph for Boris easily akin to anything Sir Winston achieved at Yalta and probably more analogous to the Earl of Beaconsfield (Benjamin Disraeli) and the Marquess of Salisbury at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Lord Frost joins the ranks of the great diplomatists such as Prince Metternich, Prince de Talleyrand, Viscount Castlereagh, or Prince Otto von Bismarck.

That sounds like the most preposterous hyperbole – and it is entirely possible that I am a little overcome with the sheer relief of where we are – but, as I say, I think we shall have to wait for the history of all this to be written to truly appreciate the sheer scale of the PM’s achievement here. Much credit also belongs to Michael Gove, the innocuously titled Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who has done more than perhaps any other minister to help secure a deal. Between them, they have achieved a solution to a problem that has bedeviled British politics for the best part of four decades. A solution outfoxed Tony Blair, David Cameron and Theresa May. In the midst of a terrible global pandemic, draining the political capital he amassed with his General Election victory, which saw the PM himself hospitalised, and despite the loss of Dominic Cummings, the caprice of President Trump, and an unexpectedly unified EU, Boris has delivered on his promises. Despite all the platitudes of the Left, it took a Tory Old Etonian to finally listen to the voice of the British people and carry out their instructions delivered in the referendum result.

He has got Brexit done.

Now, just sit back and watch while all those people told you that we must avoid a ‘No Deal Brexit’ at all costs turn up at the House of Commons tomorrow and vote against the deal. Work that one out.

Mayflower 400th anniversary

Billericay remembers the Mayflower, 400 years on

At yesterday’s full meeting of Basildon Council, I was proud to move the following motion.

 

“To be moved by Councillor Schrader –

The Council notes that this year marks 400 years since one of the most significant sea journeys in human history – the voyage of the Mayflower from England to America in 1620, carrying over 100 pilgrims seeking religious freedom in the New World.
The Council treasures the Borough’s links to this historic event and celebrates their bravery, particularly Billericay resident, Christopher Martin, who was a signatory to the Mayflower Compact, considered one of the three documents underpinning the Constitution of the United States.
The Council regrets that the Covid-19 pandemic has stymied the quatercentenary celebrations that had been planned and commends those community organisations that had arranged events and activities and requests the Policy and Resources Committee to give consideration as to how the Council might help mark this historic event when, belatedly, it may become possible to do so.”

 

Four hundred years ago, a group of families embarked upon a harrowing ten-week sea voyage, leaving England in 1620 in search of a new life in the New World.

The Pilgrims, as they became known, were seeking religious freedom, in pursuit of which, they were prepared to risk a treacherous journey, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, to start again in a strange land on the either side of the world.

It is hard to imagine the kind of enormous courage that it would have taken to even contemplate such an undertaking – but they did, and the Mayflower dropped anchor near the tip of ‘Cape Cod’, off the coast of Massachusetts, known today as Plymouth Harbor.

That was not their intended destination. They were aiming for Virginia but were blown off course by storms and forced to make the best of it.

Before they disembarked from the ship, the founders of the Colony of New Plymouth signed the Mayflower Compact. The significance of this document can hardly be understated.

In it, the colonists agreed that they would establish legal order, with their own representative government, in which each member would contribute to the safety and welfare of the settlement. It was, in essence, a social contract.

As hopeful as all that sounds, the reality was rather more grim. The Plymouth Colony endured a brutal winter and, ravaged by starvation, disease, and lack of shelter, more than half the colonists died. Yet the colony survived, and the Mayflower Compact has gone on to be recognised as one of the founding documents of the Constitution of the United States of America.

One hundred years ago – during the tricentenary of the Mayflower landing – the then Governor of Massachusetts, stated: “They drew up a form of government which has been designated as the first real constitution of modern times.

It was democratic, an acknowledgment of liberty under law and order and the giving to each person the right to participate in the government, while they promised to be obedient to the laws.

But the really wonderful thing was that they had the power and strength of character to abide by it and live by it from that day to this.”

The governor in question, by the way, was Calvin Coolidge, who later became the 30th President of the United States.

Billericay has always been justly proud of our close association with the Pilgrims and the Mayflower. Indeed, Christopher Martin and some of his companions met at the Olde Chantry House in Billericay High Street in my ward (which is today a rather good Indian restaurant) and we have many businesses and organisations in the town that are named after the Mayflower, not least Mayflower High School, also in Billericay East. Indeed, Billericay Town Council itself uses an image of the Mayflower as the town emblem.

I was to have been seconded by my ward colleague, Cllr David Dadds (Con, Billericay East), but unfortunately we ran out of time and did not reach the motions. I moved the motion anyway, without debate, and was gratified that it was passed almost* unanimously.

It is, of course, deeply regrettable that so many of the commemorative events that had been planned this year across the town, by various organisations, have not been able to go ahead due to the current circumstances. I am extremely hopeful that some, if not all, of these will be able to go ahead next year and that Billericay is able to commemorate this historic event appropriately, once it is safe to do so.

 

*Our resident arch-Billericaphobe, Cllr Kerry Smith (Ind, Nethermayne), and his gaggle of faceless ciphers in the laughably-named ‘Independent Group’, churlishly voted against the motion. Try not to take it too personally though, Billericay. I suspect it was retribution against me because I chided him for brazenly appearing on camera alongside another councillor not observing social distancing. He took umbrage.