After years of torturous negotiations, the United Kingdom has finally come to an agreement with the European Union
Anybody who has gone through a messy divorce would know that taking the decision to split up, by either partner, in most cases by just one partner, is the easy part. It is the court case, even when the partners are getting divorced completely agreeably and mutually, where things can go wrong. Particularly when couples have been married for a long, long time since the amicable division of assets can lead to huge amounts of legal wrangles. Who gets to keep the house? Who gets the dogs? Heck, couples have been known to fight over the crockery more than the children, particularly when the progeny are old enough to make their own choices. That is the sort of divorce that the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU) went through, a divorce decided by the people of the UK but whose politicians found it almost impossible to deliver. There was the ‘Irish’ question as the divided Emerald Isle would actually mean that the UK has a land border with the EU. In addition, there was the very divisive issue of fishing rights, and many a headline writer in the London press had fun with puns and the flounder, one of the fish in question. When just seven days before the Brexit transition period was slated to end on December 31, the EU and the UK announced the reaching of an agreement that will govern the trade and security relationship between the two sides starting January 1, 2021, the European Parliament and the EU member states hailed with relief the last-minute deal while some, with a sentiment tinged with caution, have pledged to scrutinise the text before giving it the green light.
There was a palpable fear among many that the lack of agreement, the so-called ‘No Deal Brexit’, would lead to utter chaos at the borders mimicking the closure that the UK just experienced thanks to the new rapid-transmitting mutation of the COVID-19 virus. This is a victory for Boris Johnson, the embattled Prime Minister of the UK whose handling of the lockdown in the nation has been severely criticised. However, with many of the finer details yet to emerge, it remains to be seen what the UK has sacrificed for the deal with the EU and just how competitive the UK will be outside the European Union. Will Johnson be able to deliver on free trade deals with nations like India, as he has promised? It may not be as easy as he thinks given that India wants better access for her citizens into the UK, which has treated visas as an extortionate system to make money. How will Johnson get a trade deal with an incoming Democratic Government in the United States and will there be a flight of capital and talent from London to cities like Paris and Frankfurt or even Eastern Europe? Fighting against control by the European Union was like Cervantes railing against the windmills, but what will the future hold now that the windmills have been demolished? What will be the raison d’etre, pardon our French of ultra-nationalist British politicians, and how will history remember this in 10, 15 or 20 years’ time?
