NFECA Newsletter - Summer 2016

Less than five years ago, the Liberal Democrats were strutting around in government, renewal of our nuclear deterrent submarines had been deferred, and it was an act of rebellion to vote in favour of holding an In/Out referendum on our membership of the European Union. How things have changed!

In Parliament today, the Lib-Dems are an irrelevant pimple on the backside of the Labour Party, Theresa May's first major speech as PM was to propose the submarine Successor programme (carried by a huge majority), and - yes! - we have seized our long-awaited and only chance of voting to leave the EU Superstate project.

David Cameron may not have intended to take the UK out of the EU, any more than he intended to put Nick Clegg and his cronies on the path to political oblivion; but, by honourably tendering his resignation on the day after the Referendum, he showed his total acceptance of the decision of the British people and made it impossible for attempts to disregard the result to be taken seriously.

The road ahead will be littered with potential pitfalls; but, by creating a special Brexit Department under David Davis and David Jones, our new Prime Minister has signalled that the negotiations will be conducted by key Conservatives who believe in the Brexit cause - not by Europhile former Ministers who championed our continued membership.

We must give the British people the secure borders they demand and restore to them the sovereignty and self-government which were stolen from them, step by surreptitious step, over the past forty years. We must not - and we shall not - fail in this great undertaking.

JULIAN LEWIS