Brexit: We are witnessing a historic demoralisation of democracy, by Brendan O’Neill.

To grasp the magnitude of what has been done to Brexit, consider this: 17.4 million Britons voted to take back control from Brussels, and yet according to a leaked memo written by one of the EU’s deputy negotiators, Brussels will ‘retain all the controls’ as part of the deal agreed by Theresa May. As part of May’s agreement to keep the whole of the UK inside a ‘customs union arrangement’ – ie, inside the customs union – Britain must ‘align their rules but the EU will retain all the controls’, the memo starkly, arrogantly states.

Take this in. The people of Britain demand control – democratic, sovereign control, over borders, over immigration, over trade – and yet May cedes control to the EU.

The largest bloc of voters in the entire history of this nation calls for a clean, radical wresting of political sovereignty back from Brussels, and yet May sells off our sovereignty to Brussels.

We say, in our confident, teeming millions, ‘Leave the EU’; our political leaders say, ‘We’re staying in it. In its thrall, under its purview, beholden to its controls.’ …

Not since every British adult finally won the franchise in 1928 has a mass vote been so explicitly and wilfully overthrown.

Not since the dawning of democracy in the modern era – that hard-won, difficult dawning – has the British people’s voice not only been ignored or side-stepped, but silenced, overturned, shut down. …

Here we have a political class standing in direct opposition to the people’s democratic cry. The thing we voted for in a free, fair, mass and historic fashion – the re-energising of British sovereignty and of British democracy – is being flagrantly denied to us by the establishment.

Who’s in charge in Britain: the British voters, or the EU bureaucrats acting as proxies for the British establishment?

via Tip of the Spear