We shouldn't pay £51bn to be spared a diet of Brussels

We shall see how Theresa May handles this latest cheeky Franco-German extortion.

While as a taxpayer I worry about what, if anything, we pay into Brussels’ corrupt sink, it is not my first concern. It is the attack on freedom that the bill represents. Are the British people free to quit the EU or not?

The bill is, of course, perfectly understandable. The Eurofanatics wish to discourage any of the 27 remaining EU nations from slinging their hook, even though it is the only option for Greece and Italy if they wish to liberate themselves from the economy-crushing single currency. There are also secessionist movements in France, Holland and Germany.

But whether trying to hold the EU together when it looks like falling apart is understandable or not, it does nothing for the world’s estimation of the so-called democracies to put a price on the liberty of any country that chooses freedom to run its own affairs.

It reveals the EU for what it is: a bureaucracy that is so out of political control that it – or its agents – tells any nation that votes against its 
machinations to have another poll to get it “right”.

The EU’s paid agents abound in the House of Lords as well as the unpaid such as that supreme egotist, Michael Heseltine. The deluded Lord Mandelson even claims he is performing his “patriotic” duty in trying to frustrate the will of the people.

It’s a funny kind of patriotism that would keep the British in an institution that seeks to sink our identity in an offshore outpost of a federal European superstate.

But then Mandelson was never very intelligent. Otherwise, Tony Blair would have been prevented from making such an unprincipled mess of government and now to give everybody a very good reason for wanting out of the EU. If Blair’s for it, it must be wrong.

Those peers who seek to delay or block the UK’s departure from the EU are not merely anti-democratic; they are fundamentally totalitarian. They admit no alternative position to their own.

This is alarmingly fashionable these days. We see it in:

The operations of Momentum, the essentially Trotskyist outfit behind Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party; its approach to dissidents is Stalinist or, to bring matters up to date, Putinist. They may not shoot people but they hound and attempt to end the careers of moderate Labour MPs.

Scottish Nationalists who do not recognise the Scottish people’s freedom to decide whether to stick by the UK; their approach is exactly like that of the EU – you will go on voting until you get it “right”.

The increasing sway of political correctness against freedom of thought, word and deed together with the anti-libertarian elements, both student and staff, in our often supine universities who would remove all traces of our glorious history that do not accord with their sensitivities.

The activities of the internet mob who use Facebook, Twitter and other outlets in trying to bulldoze opinion; they are the Devil’s gift to would-be dictators and Labour’s Momentum. And, God save us, the Mother of Parliament has encouraged the mob by obliging itself to debate large petitions.

Don’t get me wrong. Like Voltaire, I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it – in my case, provided you are not trying bully others into submission.

This brings me finally to...

President Trump’s war on the media. It is as profoundly ill-advised as Speaker Bercow’s opposition to a parliamentary element in Trump’s State visit to the UK. This is because it encourages tyrants, overt and covert, the world over to clamp down on dissidents.

Trump should heed the words of President Thomas Jefferson: “Were it left to me whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter.”

I am all for dissidents. But I never take them at face value. Beware of what they might be doing to our precious freedom. And never forget the EU’s price on liberty.