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Whoever controls the language of the debate in effect controls the debate. As we move into the next phase of the Brexit process, the UK negotiators would do well to acknowledge that the EU

_nomenklatura _is adept at self-serving linguistic appropriation. Here’s an example: the EU insistence that our future relationship needs to be played out on a “level playing field”. It

sounds reasonable — until you reflect for a moment, and acknowledge that the UK has already decided it no longer wants to remain in the game, so the geometry of the field is of no concern.

By “level playing field” what is meant is “you are not allowed to compete with us”, and to ensure this the EU has insisted that, in the form of the ECJ, their team gets to supply the

referee, no matter the curvature of the pitch. This is the point of maximum danger for Brexiteers and maximum opportunity for those who wish us to remain within the regulatory (and therefore

political) orbit of the EU Black Hole. And it will come down to language, and who proves to be more linguistically adept. The suggestion is that these negotiations are merely about

determining the economic protocols and contingencies surrounding the future relationship. This is nonsense. The underlying issue is whether or not we genuinely leave the club. The more the

negotiators on either side reduce the discussions to details of pure economics, the more likely the UK side will allow gradual accretions of sovereignty, and the more unlikely a genuine exit

becomes. Our negotiators, if they are to be genuine ambassadors of the 2016 result (and I’m not convinced they wish to be), need to be reaffirming that Brexit is not reducible to grubby

economic contingencies, but is the expression of a genuinely _moral _idea: the idea of the self-governing nation state. The economics is merely and at best the musical score. The real point

is the music in the head. There is always, morally and aesthetically, a distinction between the two. Sovereignty cannot be determined by trade talks; it must be that the latter are

determined by the former. The music is always more important than the score sheet. A nation is not, as the polemicist Mark Steyn once said, a postcode. A nation is in a sense an accumulation

of its own history. And it is not possible to detach from the history of a nation the culture that has shaped it. In the case of the UK that culture includes a system of common law that is

inconsistent with the legal structures of the EU. The English common law urges nothing, but is a set of precedents that involve the navigation of local disputes. The law of the EU, on the

other hand, urges what it decides is in the best interests of the political class, and is impervious to any appeal to “just let us sort it out by ourselves”. That cultural singularity, the

difference between the EU and the UK conceptions of law, in itself urges a clean break from the EU regardless of the economics. And the European Union, being a set of political institutions,

ordered in the direction of the dissolution of the sovereign nation states, has no culture of its own. Instead it robs the heritage of its constituent nations. Claire Fox in a recent

podcast with Brendan O’Neill describes how she and her fellow MEPs were castigated for failing to stand for the EU “national” anthem: Beethoven’s _Ode to Joy_. Fair play to her for standing

up to the EU’s system of non-cultural appropriation. Edmund Burke wrote that genuine obedience is not compelled but offered up freely. The nation state is a genuine recipient of proper

obedience because the affection is spontaneous. The EU demands it and that will be why at some point before too long its economic crises will become existential ones. So, stand fast Mr

Johnson and announce at every given point that we don’t care about the spirit-level recordings of the “playing field”. We’ve picked the ball up already and are halfway home. And if Dominic

Cummings is still looking for misfits to help with this, my rates are very reasonable.