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Analysis: ‘We do not know the destination of the trip we started tonight’
By Sam Coates, Deputy Political Editor
In announcing the end of the transitional phase and a new chapter in UK-EU relations, Boris Johnson rightly told the country that “this is the beginning.”
But tonight, despite 1,246 pages of legal agreement with the EU, plus annexes, no one really knows the destination of the journey that we started tonight.
There are some certainties. As of January 1, 2021, the UK will finally have severed the legal link with the EU first established on January 1, 1973 when it joined the European Economic Community, and will therefore not automatically have to follow. EU law.
The UK will be outside the single market, of which it was a part since its inception in 1993, and the customs union of which it has been a part at all times.
The UK will control its own migration system, without giving further automatic or even preferential entry to EU citizens. You will be able to make limited changes to your tax system, such as eliminating VAT on healthcare products.
There will be more formalities to export goods to the EU. There is even a new trade border between the Surrey and Kent borders, to prevent trucks from trying to travel to the mainland without the necessary paperwork.
Beyond that, much less is clear. The text can be printed and become law with the support of the main political parties, but that is not the end of the process.
In fact, the practical details about people’s lives have even changed today.
At lunchtime there was a tentative agreement on how to handle Gibraltar. And tonight, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps announced via his legendary Twitter that the UK has reached an agreement with all 27 EU Member States to recognize UK licenses without the need for a driving license. international.
Expect a lot from this: small but important changes in our lives.
Former Brexit Secretary David Davis explained why the conversation has not ended, because there will be a desire to weaponize the fine print of the treaty on both sides.
He told me: “What we know from history is that Europe is very determined to make the most of its trade agreements from its own point of view, so we have to negotiate or navigate all of that. Remember: sovereignty is not absolute. power – each sovereign country has to negotiate with its neighbors and people who have shared interests and opposing interests and work out what is best for them and we have to do that. “
There will also be movement because MPs will change their minds: the opinion of DUP Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson. With a long-term vision, he told me: “The government should have learned from last year. They had a withdrawal agreement that they signed on a Saturday morning, now they have a future relationship agreement that they signed on a Thursday morning and when you You do things in a hurry, sometimes you regret it at ease. “
But there is a greater challenge. Brexit is likely to cement permanent structural change in our system of democracy.
Politics – and political parties – will now adapt and transform to new changing circumstances. Let’s take an example. Over time, Labor is likely to advocate for a closer relationship than Johnson currently creates, presenting it as practical improvements to the problems caused by Brexit, but whose solutions tiptoe toward closer integration.
Meanwhile, conservatives will do the opposite, and will likely want something more flexible; do more things differently. The “freedom clause” deliberately allows Johnson’s potential successors to bargain for an even more distant relationship in exchange for accepting tariffs in some sectors.
This could possibly seem attractive to conservative leadership contenders when trying to woo the conservative faithful.
And all this means that we may well be caught in a new and different cycle of neurosis about our relationship with the EU, and in many ways the details of the new agreement actively encourage us to do so.
The fine print gives us three months to reach an agreement on financial services and four on data transfer. There is a review on whether we have been complying with the rules in four years, and the transition period in fish ends in five and a half. Last week’s deal is just the beginning, but at the beginning of the year no one can say what the fate is or when the end might be.
