Sovereignty is within the power of the entity (nation, authority, legal jurisdiction etc.) that holds it. In the case of the U.K., the House of Commons solely and exclusively holds political sovereignty for the entire U.K.
If any country or authority has to share its sovereignty with another external power to any degree whatsoever AND that external power has the ability to unilaterally impose its authority on you, forcing you to implement its will, then you don’t have genuine sovereignty.
Shared sovereignty in these circumstances (having your actions directed by any external source against your will) is not genuine sovereignty. If that was the case, you could make the argument that Vichy France was a genuinely independent country.
If a sovereign entity chooses – of its own entirely unrestricted free – will to allow an external power to have whatever degree of input into its affairs as is in its best interests, then that is an entirely different matter.
If the U.K. chooses to adopt certain E.U. standards or rules in order to accommodate trade etc. with the bloc then that is acceptable.
The acid test of acceptability is whether or not the U.K. has the completely unrestricted ability to decide on what it accepts or rejects. Any degree of external ability to decide what the U.K. has to adopt and / or compulsion in adoption of these rules by the U.K. (i.e. if the E.U. can force us to adopt the rules they decide, like they did with directives and regulations) then that is totally unacceptable.
Any degree of power or authority that any organisation, institution or jurisdiction of the E.U. can unilaterally impose is totally unacceptable.
Genuine sovereignty means full control of all aspects of all the U.K.’s affairs, unless it’s in out best interests to adopt and implement the decisions of an external body. Anything else isn’t sovereignty.
The acid tests of genuine sovereignty are:
(1) Is there any government in the world that can overrule the British one on matters concerning only the U.K.? Yes, the E.U. could before Brexit.
(2) Is there any foreign court or jurisdiction that can over – rule the British Supreme Court? – Yes, the European Court of Justice could before Brexit.
(3) Does the U.K. have the right, through our elected government, to decide who may enter our borders, how long they may stay and who may have to leave? – No, the E.U. did before Brexit.
(4) Can we negotiate and conclude any trade treaty with any country we choose? – No, the E.U. did it for us before Brexit.
Thus, under the E.U., governmental, judicial, territorial and mercantile sovereignty resided in Brussels, not the U.K.
We were not a sovereign nation whilst still in the E.U. and this situation would have got worse as more and more power was centralised in Brussels.
Thus the only viable way for the U.K. to be genuinely sovereign was to cut all ties to the E.U.
In May 2019, the E.U.’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, dismissed Brexit by sneering vehemently that it was little more than ‘nostalgia for the past.’
He was completely wrong.
Brexit isn’t about living in the past. It’s about the future. It’s about massive new opportunities to forge a far better U.K. for all of us, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
A sovereign country, a nation (singular, the U.K.) that engages with and benefits substantially from world trade.
The U.K. has a bright, sovereign future.
This country, the U.K., has a centuries old, storied history of making her own decisions and standing on her own two feet. Whilst in no way insular or xenophobic, we don’t take to undue interference or control from anybody else.
We like to assimilate the best ideas, cultural, political et al. from the rest of the world, but tend to dislike being controlled by any external forces.
The U.K. was built on the concept of being a sea faring country that had interests which spanned the globe. This ended when we became a province of the European project. Slowly, over the following decades, the U.K. lost these characteristics as it was transformed into just another E.U. member state.
Now we’ve left the E.U., there is a golden opportunity to re-acquire them again which must be seized with both hands and ran with, making the most of it that we can.
We have an extremely bright future as a free, sovereign global nation making our own way in the world, doing things the way we chose to, not what the E.U. directs us to do.
For more from Stephen Bailey please visit: https://ukunionism.wordpress.com/blog-2/
© 2021 Stephen Bailey
