The grand scheme that began a century ago to create the European Union is now looking ragged.
Jean Monnet was the front man for this stealth project in the years immediately after World War I. He began his plans in earnest after the failure of the United States Senate to ratify the peace treaty in 1920, thereby keeping the United States out of the League of Nations.
He and the people in the shadows behind him had a series of victories that lasted from 1951 until last week. The European Coal and Steel Community was the bait; the European Union was the long-term hook. Britain joined the European Economic Community on January 1, 1973. Wikipedia summarizes Western Europe's march into the lobster trap.
As a result of the Maastricht Treaty, the European Communities became the European Union on 1 November 1993. The new name reflected the evolution of the organisation from an economic union into a political union. As a result of the Lisbon Treaty, which entered into force on 1 December 2009, the Maastricht Treaty is now known, in updated form as, the Treaty on European Union (2007) or TEU, and the Treaty of Rome is now known, in updated form, as the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (2007) or TFEU.
If the history of the move toward European union is to be written by some diligent historian in the future, it should begin with Jean Monnet and end with Nigel Farage. There are representative figures who articulate a position, and in rare cases, their vision becomes a reality. This was true of Monnet. This will soon be true of Farage. More than anyone else in the British Isles, Nigel Farage articulated the case for Great Britain's departure from the EU.
He made that case year after year in the parliament of the European Union. He was despised in Parliament. He was ridiculed. And now, as the world can see, he has triumphed.
NO FARAGE, NO JOHNSON
It may look as though Boris Johnson pulled it off all by himself. That is shortsighted. Johnson's Tories were unopposed by the Brexit Party in last week's election. The Brexit Party stood down in order to give Johnson the victory.
Johnson's victory was overwhelming. Not only was it a victory over the Labour Party, it was a victory over the 21 Tory Remainers who broke ranks in October. They lost their position as party representatives in the election. They deliberately committed political suicide. They have now retired into the obscurity that they so deeply deserve. They have been replaced by much harder core politicians who will back Johnson's negotiations to depart. So, the Tory party has a much stronger backbone on Brexit than it did before the election.
Then there was the feckless Theresa May. In 2016, she was opposed to leaving the EU. On April 26, 2016, just before the vote, she gave a speech on Brexit. She made it clear that she opposed it.
And I want to emphasise that I think we should stay inside the EU not because I think we’re too small to prosper in the world, not because I am pessimistic about Britain’s ability to get things done on the international stage. I think it’s right for us to remain precisely because I believe in Britain’s strength, in our economic, diplomatic and military clout, because I am optimistic about our future, because I believe in our ability to lead and not just follow.
Yet she wound up as the chief negotiator for Brexit, 2016-19. The establishment was desperate to get some kind of a deal, or no deal, or another vote, or something. They used her to slow down the whole procedure. The Conservative Party voted for her as Prime Minister in July 2016. In January 2019, she called an election which resulted in a defeat for the Tories. After that, they did not have a majority government. She tried to get her compromised Brexit plan through Parliament. She always came up short. So, she resigned in July of this year. In her departure, she said this: "I think we have achieved a lot over the last three years but whenever you come to the end of a premiership I think everybody will always feel that there is more that they wanted to do." The woman was self-deluded to the end. Her emotional departure was a cry of self-indulgent pain by a loser who did not get her way. (Start at 6:00)
She will be remembered, if at all, as an interim prime minister who accomplished nothing. She was the last hope of the British establishment on the Brexit question, and she failed miserably.
How had this happened? In 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron, a Remainer, called for a vote on leaving the EU as a political defense measure. This was an election promise. Why did he do this? Because of ceaseless pressure from Nigel Farage's UKIP (United Kingdom Independent Party). Farage gained support within the Conservative Party. When the vote went the wrong way in 2016, the establishment was horrified. Cameron quit. So, the Conservative Party's establishment figures elected May to replace him. That was a complete and utter failure, as they learned last week.
Johnson is going to get his way. There will be no way for the establishment to stop him. They tried, but they failed.
They failed last week because of Farage. He created a political party a year ago, the Brexit Party, that had the support of 22% of the voters. Nobody had ever done that before. The party's slogan: "Leave means leave." Then he and the party stood down last week in order to let Johnson win. Farage understood that Johnson would deliver Brexit, though not a pure, clean Brexit, and that was enough. He decided to put his personal ambitions aside. This let the voters throw out the incompetent Labour Party led by the incompetent socialist Jeremy Corbyn.
Corbyn is finished. He knows it. The voters know it. Whoever replaces him in the Labour Party will be closer to Tony Blair than to Corbyn. The far Left of the Labour Party is now buried.
Four years ago, this outcome was inconceivable to the British establishment. That was why Cameron called for the election. He knew that the voters would vote to remain in the EU. He was confident of this. He was wrong. This ended his career.
The British establishment is dumbfounded. There is no way that Boris Johnson can be stopped. Britain is going to leave the EU on January 31, 2020. This is irreversible.
CONCLUSION
More than anyone else, Nigel Farage upended this scheme. He took a public stand when he was elected to the parliament of the European Union. He used his remarkable eloquence to challenge them at every step. The videos on YouTube of his speeches gave him an audience, not just in Great Britain, but around the world.
In 2016, he helped persuade the voters in Great Britain to leave the European Union. Without him, none of this would have happened. Without him, there would have been no vote to leave the EU in 2016. Without him, Boris Johnson would not have completed the devastation of the Remainers, taking down Jeremy Corbyn as a side benefit.
Hail, Nigel! We salute you!
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