Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has said the UK has saved itself at least £28 billion a year by leaving the European Union.

Speaking to GB News, he said: “The 10th anniversary of Brexit. Think back to the 23rd of June 2016; that glorious day when the country decided it would rule itself once again.

“Rather than being told what to do by an authoritarian bureaucracy in Brussels, with little democracy, we decided that we would do it for ourselves. The era of managing decline was going to be put behind us as we thought that we could succeed, as Margaret Thatcher had shown us, that we could succeed by our own effort, by our own vote.

“And what’s the biggest argument, the biggest benefit of Brexit? It has always been, and it is fundamentally, democracy. And democracy relates to the nation state, which is the building block of international order and is the foundation of liberty.

“There is no liberty in an international government, because it doesn’t take into account your own local direct democracy.

“The validity of international action is through the nation state, and the nation state is dependent upon the people of that state, the democracy of that state, if you like, the demos that makes up the democracy, the people who rule themselves.

“And from this decision we have not only taken back control, but we’ve also saved ourselves billions of pounds. We’re saving ourselves probably £28 billion a year, likely to rise to £36 billion if Ursula von der Leyen has her way with her 2 trillion euro budget that she’s proposing, plus into the hundreds of millions of pounds that we saved by not being part of the Covid recovery fund.

“We were able to roll out the vaccine faster, as you know. We are developing AI in a much better way than the continental Europeans, because they’re regulating it to death, as they regulate everything to death.

“Our farmers are no longer subject to the three crop rule. They have better fertilisers and better insecticides because we’re no longer in the European Union.

“We recognise drugs safely from Japan and America, they come to our market faster. Why? Because we’re no longer part of the dead hand of the European bureaucracy…

“The opportunities are enormous. We have begun to take some of them, but the supply side reforms that we can have, the freer trade we can have, the reduction in prices.

“Already, food inflation is lower in the UK than it is in continental Europe. Even Rachel Reeves has taken tariffs off foodstuffs, 16% for example, taken off baked beans. Now, I loathe baked beans, but they are a staple of people’s diets, and people shouldn’t have to pay more for baked beans. The same goes for oranges.

“We were protecting a European racket, we were paying for the privilege, we were making ourselves poor. There is much more we can do, and get out of the nonsense European climate change commitments, which are making us cold and poor, or today, hot and poor, as we’re not allowed any air conditioning under loony rules.

“But we’re free to do it for ourselves. It is a wonderful position to be in, we are our own country. There is nothing now between the British people, their own democracy, their own future, a possibility of making their own way.

“And if we fail, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. With freedom goes responsibility. And thank heavens, we’ve taken both.”