Put country before party and back the Leave-backing candidate best-placed to win where you live

Put country before party and back the Leave-backing candidate best-placed to win where you live

Another Brexit deadline passed us by at the end of last month, such was the inevitable result of a Remain-dominated Parliament. However, there is nothing inevitable about the future of our Parliament or the future of our country. Now opportunity is once again in the hands of the people of Britain as we prepare for next month’s general election. As Parliament has again failed to let us leave the EU, we now need to elect a Parliament for the delivery of Brexit and beyond.

Seldom have the stakes been so high, or the mood of the country so fractured and weary, after years of interminable political campaigning. Too long have we been held hostage by the hubris of a Remain Parliament, but pride comes before a fall. Will our democracy cut through the vested interests of the Remain establishment? Time will tell.

Trust the people to decide their MP, their party and the policies under which we are governed. The people can think for themselves and we can see that there is a way out of the EU. We don’t need any electoral pacts; we can find our way to a Leave majority one more time. It’s time we’d left the EU; we need a map to find our way out, a constituency map.

So how to finally Leave the EU through our vote at the general election? It depends who you are and where you are. Something Brexiteers understand is a map. We know where we are, who we can elect to represent us and where our vote counts. There are constituencies which the Conservatives will never win. Many Labour Leave voters would never lend their vote to the Conservatives, but they could vote for the Brexit Party; Leave-voting Conservative voters should follow suit in such constituencies.

It’s about time Leave voters played the system in their favour. I have always voted Conservative – and in a safe Conservative constituency – and I will do so again. However, if I could vote a few miles away in a traditionally Labour-held constituency, I would gladly vote for the Brexit Party. My politics don’t change between constituency, but the meaning of my vote does. The chances of the Conservatives winning a safe Labour seat with Brexit undelivered are slim, but the Brexit Party stands a chance with a few votes borrowed from the Conservatives.

There is no prize for second place; splitting the Leave vote in a constituency helps no one. It’s time to put country before party and the people should lead their politicians in this regard. My vote is being cast to get us out of the EU, and to do this we have to keep Labour in opposition.

I thought the only thing that Jeremy Corbyn and I agreed on was our desire to leave the EU; now we do not even share this view. Labour are now a party of Remain: amongst their many conflicting policies on Brexit, Remain now dominates. Corbyn’s Labour wants to nationalise every service and every industry, but they won’t nationalise the governance of our country; they are all too keen to keep our country in the private hands of the EU Presidents. This is a taste of Britain under Corbyn’s Labour: our democracy and the people ignored, the elites of the Labour Party and the Momentum foot soldiers imposing their will on our country.

It may be easy to forget that there is more to politics than Brexit and that there are other problems as deep and as intractable. Were we to free ourselves from the control of the EU, but find ourselves under the crushing yoke of socialism, we would have installed yet another tyranny, much closer to home. And yet if Corbyn’s Labour Party won the general election, we would have the worst of all worlds – no Brexit, no freedom and no prosperity.

The Conservatives can win a majority and vote together with the Brexit Party to thwart the undemocratic Remainer establishment. However, the Conservatives and the Brexit Party, the parties who promise to take us out of the EU, have fallen into the trap set by Remainers after the referendum – the trap of ‘what kind of Brexit?’. It is true that leaving the EU without a new deal would mean that we leave most quickly and definitively; but this was not to be. The Withdrawal Agreement can work for Leave, and what the deal may lack in perfection it makes up for in political will and its ability to get through a Parliament. It’s still fixable and the direction of a Free Trade Agreement sets us, and the EU, on the right course.

If the EU has taught us anything, it is that change happens incrementally. Step by step did they tighten their controlling grip on our great country’s sovereignty. Now we step away and build a new era of freedom and prosperity, step by step, shaking the dust of the EU from our country. By leaving, we replace the EU doctrine of ‘Ever Closer Union’, with a British policy of ‘Ever Greater Freedom’.

Let us hope that our vote in the general election is a meaningful vote. And may a day soon come when our vote means so much more. Our vote can mean that we choose those who govern us; those who decide our laws and protect our liberty. As we vote, we are blessed by the ability to learn from our own mistakes, to take responsibility for our actions and those of whom we elect as we remove those from power who do not serve our interests, those who do not stand up for our country, and those who fail to let freedom and prosperity grow.