TODAY is a proud day – January 31 is an important date that every schoolchild should be taught. It is an anniversary that should be marked every year as a defining moment in the story of our nation. But you would be forgiven for not knowing the significance of this day — it has already been whitewashed from the history books by the great and the good who still lament the reckless decision to give ordinary people a vote in a referendum on Britain’s future in the EU.

There will be no parades or grand speeches from the Prime Minister to mark this occasion, but today is the fifth anniversary of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. As Big Ben’s bongs rang out at exactly 11pm five years ago, I was standing on the stage in Parliament Square, wearing a Union Jack dress, alongside Nigel Farage and dozens of other Brexit campaigners of every political hue, as tens of thousands of Britons waved flags and cheered the moment of our freedom.

I was thrilled and proud that 52 per cent of us had defied the scaremongering threats of the Remain campaign in 2016 to vote to shake off the yoke of the Brussels bureaucrats and once again become a sovereign nation state. And I was even prouder that we had stuck to our guns and refused to be cowed when the Remainer establishment battled for three and a half bitter years after that vote in a bid to thwart the democratic will of the people.

It was a day of huge relief but also of enormous hope for our Brexit freedoms. Then, just two months later, we were locked in our homes under the first Covid lockdown. So much for taking back control, eh?. Five years on, the Brexit bunting and flags have been packed away, along with my Union Jack dress, but the hangover from that cold January night in 2020 is still with us. I never expected to wake up in the land of milk and honey the morning after. After all, Brexit was not a one-off event. It is a process, a work in progress. But much of that work has yet to even start.

The complacent political classes still yearn to turn back the clock, to once again have unelected officials and quangos make all the tough decisions, as far removed from the people as possible. That is why they have failed to capitalise on the benefits of Brexit, failed to deregulate and maximise our trading freedoms as they tiptoe around the EU, some even begging to be allowed back in. They have stuck to the same tired old EU mantras, with rising taxes, bloated bureaucracy, net zero targets and mass immigration numbers, with no mandate from the British people.

Is that what we meant by Brexit success? Of course it isn’t. Yet I do not regret my vote to Leave for one nanosecond. Five years on, the Brexit bunting and flags have been packed away, along with my Union Jack dress, but the hangover from that cold January night in 2020 is still with us. Why? Because, like most Leave voters, my support for Brexit was first and foremost about restoring democratic accountability, regardless of any economic benefits we would reap.

No one should be able to make rules and laws governing our lives who isn’t democratically accountable to the British people and who can not be booted out when they get it wrong. That did not mean we had suddenly got much better political rulers (as we have seen for ourselves) but it does mean that now we get to hold them to account because they can no longer blame Brussels for their own failures. And we will keep booting them out until they do their job and capitalise on our Brexit freedoms.

Our country has a long and illustrious past, but leaving the EU will ensure that our best years are yet to come. Our country has a long and illustrious past, but leaving the EU will ensure that our best years are yet to come. I know that in my dotage, on a long distant cold January day, I will dig out that Union Jack dress from the bottom of the drawer and I will once again smile with joy as our nation finally celebrates the anniversary of Brexit with the pride it truly deserves.

THE latest official estimates for the British population are staggering, with the number set to rise above 72million by 2032. And that growth is almost entirely due to an extra five million immigrants coming to our shores. But even that doesn’t tell the full story. That figure is only net migration, which takes into account those who leave the country, too. There will be far MORE arrivals than the headline figure suggests.

And, more importantly, that official projection will turn out to be a wild underestimate of the true numbers. How do we know this? Because all of the other estimates have also been wildly wrong. Where are all these people going to live? Where will their children go to school?. Where will we find all the doctors and nurses who will treat them if they fall ill?. How will we increase the supply of electricity, gas, water, parking spaces and everything else they will need?.