Image: FlickrMaybe, if you were a Remain voter, you can now say that the UK did the EU a favour, and in a funny kind of way, did itself a favour, when it voted leave.
“Thank God” we voted Brexit, headlined the Daily Express, yesterday.
Speaking on BBC's Question Time last night, the Brexit broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer said: "If the good folk of our lovely European friends and neighbours choose to go along with the federal super-state, choose to give away their national powers, choose to give away their democracy to a federal super-state: good for them. I voted to leave so did more than half the country last year because this is exactly what we don’t want and I don’t have a single regret at all.”
Just to remind you, the EU Commission President Jean-Claude Junker has been talking about creating a more closely intertwined EU.
He said: “We have to respect the will of the British people. We are going to make progress. We will keep moving. We will move on because Brexit isn’t everything. It isn’t the future of Europe. It isn’t the be all and end all... On the 30 March 2019, we will be a union of 27 and I suggest we prepare very well for that date.”
But he added: “I have lived the European project through my entire life. I have fought for it, I have worked for it. I have been through good times, and I have been through bad times ... I have sometimes suffered with Europe and agonised over Europe.
“I have been through thick and thin with the European Union and never have I lost my love for the European Union. As we all know there is no love without disappointment, or very rarely.”
And he went on to outline ideas for bringing the EU closer together.
Of course, the Brexit media love it, this shows how right they were, all along, they infer.
But there is a wider point. Before the Brexit vote, the EU was in crisis: the nationalist Marine le Penn was polling well in France, and the Far-Right Gert Wilders seemed set to be the next leader of Holland, and the EU economy was seeing an appalling economic performance.
Onlookers saw trouble, and the only hope for the euro, was a more united Europe.
And there is no doubt that a collapse in the EU, with or without Brexit, would have been disastrous for the UK.
Then Brexit happened. Le Penn was defeated, as was Wilders, and now the EU economy is seeing its best performance in over a decade.
And from this position of strength, Junker calls for a more united EU, such a plan would have been inconceivable for as long as the UK was a member.
Now the UK is leaving, the way is open for the EU to save itself, and in the process create more economic stability, which is good for Britain.
But will the EU reward the UK for the magnanimous way in which it fell on its sword in order to help the EU save itself, by being supportive in negotiations?
