What sort of Brexit will it be? Your guess is as good as mine
NO one now doubts that we’ll get some sort of Brexit. Boris Johnson has been gifted a huge majority. He can do what he likes. What’s more, the Official Opposition are electing a new leader.
They’re going to be busy with their own internal divisions for at least the next three months (or more likely for the next five years). So, the question is, what sort of Brexit will it be?
But hold on, I hear you say. Isn’t it already sorted? Wasn’t the election all about getting Brexit done. Good old Boris promised he’d have the whole thing delivered, oven ready for Christmas. Well 2020 has got off to a flying start in Parliament! With three days debate on the detail of the Brexit Withdrawal Bill.
I’m reminded of the lady on a radio phone-in a little while ago. She’d voted to leave the EU but was having second thoughts. As she explained sweetly, ‘I had thought it was going to be like resigning from a club. Just a matter of sending in a letter.’ But it’s not as simple as that, as the last three miserable years have proved.
Both Mrs May and now Mr Johnson have failed completely to deliver anything like the wonderful deal promised. And we’re one step closer to ‘getting Brexit done’ only because the Prime Minister gave in to the EU. He agreed to a customs border down the Irish Sea. An internal border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That’s why the Democratic Unionist Party are purple with rage.
They were betrayed so that Johnson could claim a victorious deal and win the election. (Though Labour’s antics were also a great help to him).
So, what sort of Brexit will it be? Now comes the hard bit. Negotiating our future relationship with the EU. And trying to tie up hundreds of trade deals with other countries around the world.
These are needed to take the place of all the trade deals we already have through the European Union – the Union that we are exiting remember.
And it’s not just trade. It’s about the money we have been getting from the EU for all sorts of development projects. And it’s about all the old questions such as immigration and a right to remain for all the EU medical staff, vets, care staff, fruit and vegetable pickers etc.
So, what sort of Brexit will it be? At present your guess is as good as mine. Because the Tory party were criminally vague about this matter going into the election. So, they could do whatever they liked when they won.
My guess, for what it’s worth, is that it’s going to be hard and areas such as ours will come off worst of all.