Toby on Tuesday

'Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'

Last week, during a visit to London after Islamic State’s atrocities in France, I visited the Eurostar Terminus at St. Pancras Station.   What struck me most deeply was the eerie silence.   Apart from the security guards and the motionless trains, the place seemed deserted.   And as someone who has always loved France, her way of life, her art and her people, and of course her food and wine, I found this deeply disheartening.   It was as if the illusion of the Euro-dream had finally died.   I have always suspected that the Euro project would end in France and not in Britain, and this is now happening.   Despite the foolish attempts of Brussels and Berlin to prevent it, the return of border controls has ended the Schengen accord while the vast new debt being incurred to restore some security to France will breach every rule of the Eurozone – sic transit gloria mundi.

 

And as the Euro dream fades, it seems doubly strange that America’s State Department should continue to put pressure on Britain to remain in a project that now poses an existential threat to our national survival.   To the utopians in Brussels and Berlin, free movement of people across the EU is an article of faith, but on the ground it puts the lives of the innocent at risk.   Now one statistic of which I am quite proud is that this blog receives over 1,000 visitors a week from the United States.   And in a year’s time the citizens of America will go to the polls to elect a new President.   It would be wrong of me to advise our cousins there – for indeed they are our cousins – which way to vote.   But I would ask them to support candidates who feel able to grant to Britain that which America sought from Britain in 1776 – the right to be a self-governing democracy once more.

 

Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence contains some of the noblest words in the English language, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed – That wherever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...”   It is not difficult to understand just how divided Britain was over the American War of Independence, how many here sided with the patriots and how many chose to wear the buff and blue colours of George Washington’s army.   The patriots prevailed, as they were bound to do, and today I say to their descendants, Britain too must have her own Independence Day, for the sake of our shared heritage of free government and for the safety of our people!

 

Until next Tuesday!

 

Toby