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Inside Out | Far from a done deal, Britain’s Brexit battles are only just beginning
- The practical work of negotiating Britain’s post-EU future is just starting, including on trade across the Irish Sea, fishing rights and services trade in Europe. Both the Tory Party and Britain remain deeply split and bread-and-butter issues loom large
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As the jubilant Nigel Farage slopped back in his seat in the European parliament for the last time on Thursday, dropping a paper Union flag to his side, he was clear his work was done: “That’s it. It’s all over. Finished.”
His parting words reminded me of those of American President Donald Trump as he unleashed a tariff war on China: “trade wars are good, and easy to win”. Both outbursts describe the world in satisfyingly simple, comfortingly binary terms. But both are profoundly wrong.
After Prime Minister Boris Johnson returns to London over the weekend from Sunderland, where he chose to celebrate his “moment of real national renewal and change”, the real practical work of negotiating Britain’s future outside the European Union is about to begin. It is going to be tough, and perhaps at times ugly. It will test the patience and creative talents of negotiators both from Brussels and Britain.
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For millions of voters who innocently believe the battles linked with Brexit are at last over and finished, a rude awakening awaits.
I have over the past 3½ years made clear my conviction that the Brexit initiative was a blunder, a regrettable exercise in British political and economic self-harm.
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