Tomorrow evening, my colleagues and I will vote to ensure that the process of leaving the European Union is commenced by the triggering of article 50. I have always believed that we were much better off in an arrangement where the people of the United Kingdom elected representatives to express their views and make decisions about them exclusively in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
In the history of our involvement in the EU, time and again detrimental laws were passed by people who were not part of our country and were not elected in our country. In my role as a councillor and in the Northern Ireland Assembly, we were told, time and again, “These measures might not be suitable for Northern Ireland and may have consequences that were perhaps not even intended by the people who wrote them. Nevertheless, you don’t even have a say in whether these laws should be taken into consideration. You simply have to sign them off.”
I campaigned in the referendum to leave the EU, and I am pleased that my constituents, by 55% to 45%, took my advice—that is more than vote for me in a general election, so I even persuaded some of my detractors that it was the correct thing to do.