Darren Grimes: There is still so much more to do to seize the opportunities of Brexit

Well, as many of you will already know, I was a proud leave campaigner in the EU Referendum, where I helped launch the Leave campaign in Newcastle with the Prime Minister.

This was quite possibly the most crucial campaign of my life.

The Remainers, pushed a campaign of project fear.

They told us leaving would be a disaster with grave consequences in the long run.

We were told we’d lose our spot as a financial hub to invest in; we were told unemployment would skyrocket, we’d have shortages of everything from food to medicines, we were told we’d be worse off and become little Britain.

Well, sorry to disappoint yas, but two years on from leaving, none of those claims has materialised.

Since leaving the EU, Britain has struck huge and profitable trade deals with both old friends and new allies.

Trade deals with Australia worth £10.4bn where tariffs on 100% of UK exports were eliminated.

The new security agreement AUKUS has placed us in good stead in defence and shifted our focus away from a tiny European outlook.

Increased post-Brexit trade with South Korea has seen a surge of £620m for UK exporters, and now we are even looking at a whopping £100bn trade deal with India!

A post-Brexit Britain is unshackled and here, folks, and we’ve only just begun.

Another considerable boost Brexit has rewarded us was taking back control of our laws away from the dictating European Court of Justice and back into the sovereign hands of the British Parliament.

Thanks to Brexit, Britain opted out of the European Medicines Agency and delivered one of the fastest and most successful vaccine rollouts globally.

Whilst Europeans continue to remain shackled by restrictions on their freedoms.

Fishermen feel the benefits of being outside of the European Union and taking back control of their fisheries as Brixham, who depends so heavily on fisheries, had their highest sales recorded in history in 2021, selling £43.6m worth of fish.

President Macron of France must feel like he’s been sewn up like a kipper during an election year.

So project fear was precisely that – false projections designed to stoke fear—a campaign designed to tell us that what we have wasn’t worth a damn.

The things built up and fought for in this country should be let go because Britain can’t possibly survive without being swallowed up by the Brussels cartel.

Utter tosh.

But at the same time, there is still so much more to do.

When I campaigned for Leave, I imagined what Britain could do with its newfound freedoms.

We could create a globally competitive economy.

We could slash taxes to alleviate households’ burden – such as the EU-enforced minimum 5% VAT on household energy bills.

Well, so far, the only EU-related tax cut we have had is the removal of VAT on tampons, a worthy tax scrap, but we ought to go further.

And instead of tax cuts, we’re seeing tax rises on National Insurance and Corporation Tax – utter lunacy that squanders the opportunities open to us.

We were told we could deregulate our economy, but so far, it seems nearly all of those EU regulations have been carried over into UK legislation.

As Ross Clark in the Spectator put it, “If we were going to [Brexit to] become simply a different brand of European social democracy, it is hard to tell what it was all for.”

So my view is that while the pessimistic predictions of a Brexit Britain haven’t materialised, there is still so much more to do to seize the opportunities.

Including, tackling that illegal migration over the English Channel.