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By AFP 
3h ago
Jitendra Joshi and Phil Hazlewood at the AFP offices
LONDON – Britain finally broke its turbulent half-century association with Europe on Thursday, abandoning the single market and the EU customs union to go its own way four and a half years after its shocking vote to leave the bloc.
Brexit, which has dominated politics on both sides of the Channel since 2016, became a reality when Big Ben struck 11 p.m. in London, just as most of continental Europe ushered in 2021.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the front man for the “Get Out” campaign, described it as an “astonishing moment” for the country and played out his optimistic narrative of a “global Britain” free from the rules set in Brussels.
He promised that the post-Brexit UK, despite being hit by an increase in coronavirus cases, would be an “open, generous, outward-looking, internationalist and free trade” country.
“We have our freedom in our hands and it is up to us to make the most of it.”
On the cover of its Friday edition, the stridently anti-EU Daily Express featured a picture of the White Cliffs of Dover and the headline “Our Future. Our Britain. Our Destiny.”
Legally, Britain left the European Union on January 31, but has been in a paralyzed transition period during contentious talks to secure a free trade deal with Brussels, which was finally closed on Christmas Eve.
Now that the transition is over, the EU rules no longer apply. The immediate consequence is the end of the free movement of more than 500 million people between Great Britain and the 27 states of the EU.
Customs border controls are back for the first time in decades and despite the free trade agreement allowing Britain continued access to Europe’s nearly 450 million consumers, queues and the disruption of additional paperwork are expected.
At the Eurotunnel terminal in Calais, French officials began implementing the new formalities at midnight sharp, starting with a truck from Romania carrying mail and packages.
Matt Smith, managing director of HSF Logistics, which mainly ships fresh meat and chilled goods between Britain and Europe, said he would ship around 15 loaded trucks to the EU on New Year’s Eve before the changes.
The government’s new post-Brexit customs systems have not been largely tested and Smith doubted how his business would fare with the new paperwork.
“We are not very sure to be honest, it seems like a headache,” he told AFP. “There will be delays along the line at some point.”
But despite all the new barriers looming, the British government boasted an immediate Brexit dividend when it announced the end of the value-added tax on tampons, making health care products cheaper for millions of women after the departure from EU tax rules.
Britain is the first member state to leave the EU, which was created to forge unity after the horrors of World War II.
The 2016 referendum opened long-lasting wounds between those who dropped out and the rest, and ushered in years of political paralysis before Johnson took office last year, vowing to chart a future for Britain based on scientific innovation and new partnerships across the seas.
A parliamentary debate on Wednesday to ratify the trade deal was marked by elegiac farewells from pro-EU lawmakers and warnings of disruption as Britain dismantles the intricate web of ties built since joining the EU forerunner in 1973 .
While the EU’s tariff and quota-free trade deal avoided potential trade chaos for the foreseeable future, the divorce will unfold in many practical ways.
The changes apply to everything from pet passports to the length of time Brits can visit their holiday homes on the mainland and an end to British participation in a student exchange program.
Potential port disruptions are fueling fears of food and medicine shortages, as well as delays for tourists and business travelers used to traveling smoothly in the EU.
British fishermen are unhappy with the commitment to allow continued access for EU vessels in British waters.
The key financial services sector is also facing anxious wait to find out on what basis it can continue to deal with Europe, having been largely omitted from the trade deal.
Northern Ireland’s border with EU member state Ireland will be closely watched to ensure movements are not restricted, a key element of the 1998 peace agreement that ended 30 years of violence over British rule. .
And in pro-EU Scotland, where Brexit has fueled calls for a new vote on independence, Johnson faces a possible constitutional headache as 2021 dawns.
Scottish pro-EU Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon promised in a tweet: “Scotland will be back soon, Europe. Keep the light on.”
But opinion polls indicate that the majority of Britons, on both sides of the referendum divide, want to move on and are far more concerned about the worsening coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed 73,500 lives.
Johnson, who is among the nearly 2.5 million affected by the virus, warned of difficult times ahead due to the resurgence of Covid-19 infections, but said a vaccine developed in the UK offers reason for the hope.
“It’s going to be better,” said Maureen Martin, from the port of Dover which is across the English Channel from France. “We need to govern ourselves and be our own bosses.”
Britain is a great financial and diplomatic success and one of the top NATO powers with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and in the G7 group of the world’s richest economies.
The EU has now lost 66 million people and an economy valued at 2.85 trillion dollars, and it is regretted that Britain wanted to leave.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Britain will remain “our friend and ally”, but regretted that Brexit is the result of “many lies and false promises.”
Britain’s top trade negotiator David Frost tweeted: “Britain has just become a fully independent country again, deciding our own affairs for ourselves.”
But his EU counterpart Michel Barnier was more pessimistic. “No one has been able to show me the added value of Brexit,” he told RTL radio.
“It’s a divorce … you can’t have a divorce.”
Boarding a Eurostar train in Paris as Brexit time approached, Francois Graffin, 59, said he was going to pack up his life in London and live in France again.
“It breaks my heart,” he said.
In Britain, Brexit has been the culmination of years of anti-Brussels turmoil as the union transformed from a business community to a more ambitious political project.
However, the 2016 referendum never specified what form Brexit should take.
Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, repeatedly failed to achieve a “soft” separation that would have kept Britain largely tied to the EU.
But he made a much tougher deal, in the face of deep unrest from UK opposition parties and businesses.
Now, after months of stormy negotiations that were repeatedly disrupted by the pandemic, Brussels is also ready to move on.
But British lawmaker Chris Hazzard of the Irish Republican Sinn Fein party said Brexit was far from over.
“When all the bragging dies down … it will become depressingly clear that this trade agreement is … the beginning of a new business relationship built on permanent negotiations, disputes and recriminations,” he warned.
The Daily Telegraph, where Johnson made a name for himself as a European correspondent criticizing Brussels, said the government faces a new reality stripped of the specter of the EU.
“Politicians will have to get used to taking on much greater responsibilities than they used to have while the UK has been in the EU,” he said.
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