It’s time to delay Brexit

I’m for Brexit. As a Young Conservative in Wadhurst, I wanted to leave the EU. When John Major signed the Maastricht Treaty, I saw it as a betrayal of such massive consequence I briefly joined the Labour Party — and was later forced to confess this indiscretion to Tory associations up and down the country. As a student at Oxford, I joined the Campaign for an Independent Britain, and formed lasting friendships with like-minded undergraduates for whom sovereignty was the first principle of patriotism and politics; everything else depended on being able to govern our own affairs. I am one of those Conservatives who, like the grassroots, cannot understand why so many MPs are so wedded to the idea of the EU. It is everything the Conservative rank and file oppose in three quarters of Conservative associations up and down the country. There was a hideously awkward moment in 2008 when, as a candidate in a “workshop” (don’t ask), I listened to Jane Ellison, selected for Battersea, give an answer on the EU that seemed far too soft.