Opinion | With Brexit, the UK may be bolstering the EU and seeding its own disintegration

While the 2020s could see a more federal, centralised European Union, the opposite may be true for the UK

With pressures growing for Scottish independence and potentially even Irish reunification, these are uncertain times for the union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen meet on December 9 on post-Brexit arrangements. A trade deal was finally reached on December 24. Photo: Getty Images / TNS

Published: 3:45pm, 29 Dec 2020Updated: 7:43pm, 29 Dec 2020

The historic UK-EU trade deal secured on December 24 is seen by many as the end of Brexit. Yet, the huge, wide-ranging processes unleashed by Britain’s 2016 referendum are only just beginning to play out in ways that could have contrasting implications for the European Union and United Kingdom.

While the 2020s could potentially see a more federal, centralised EU after the UK’s departure, the opposite may be true for the UK itself. With pressures growing for Scottish independence and potentially even Irish reunification, these are uncertain times for the union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The immediate backdrop for this is December 24’s trade breakthrough which is, mostly, welcome news for European and wider global business after more than four years of Brexit uncertainty.

However, this is tempered by the fact that the agreement is the first international trade negotiation in history where barriers go up, rather than down, compared to the status quo, and it does not cover the services sector, which accounts for 80 per cent and 70 per cent respectively of the UK and EU economies.

A worker folds the EU flag after being lowered in Gibraltar, a British colony off Spain’s southern tip, on January 31. The EU-UK deal does not cover Gibraltar, and Madrid and London are still negotiating how their shared border will be transformed once the Brexit transition period ends on December 31. Photo: AP

Much attention, in the past half decade, has focused on these trade (and the earlier withdrawal) negotiations between the EU and United Kingdom. This has obscured the fact that the UK referendum set off a much wider set of changes.

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