In Europe, but out of the Brussels force field. Truly we can now gallop down the high road of history

With his customary rhetorical flair, Boris Johnson summed up in a single sentence yesterday what Brexit truly means. ‘We want a new relationship between Britain and the EU as sovereign equals, joined by friendship, commerce, history, interests and values, while respecting one another’s freedom of action,’ he told the Commons.

Brexit is not and was never meant to be a betrayal, a snub or the prelude to some bare-knuckle trade war. it is a recognition by two mature political partners that they can happily co-exist without having to cohabit.

true, the divorce proceedings have been messy, acrimonious and at times even hysterical. But they are over. After four-and-a-half years of wrangling, on January 1, we’re out.

Not out of Europe of course, to which we are inextricably bound by shared geography, history and genealogy. But out of the Brussels force field and freed from the creeping menace of ‘ever closer union’.

Nor are we crashing out in bad faith or out of spite. We are departing in a dignified and orderly fashion, carrying off the free trade deal Mr Johnson promised (but so many swore was beyond his reach).

Naturally there are still the ‘BitterEnders’, for whom no form of deal would assuage their fury at the referendum result. But they are very definitely on the wrong side of history. the Leave v Remain arguments have been ‘ super- masticated’ ( as Mr Johnson put it) to a lifeless pulp and already seem strangely archaic.

But if this was a day of destiny for Britain, for Mr Johnson it was one of towering personal achievement. No wonder he radiated such confidence at the Despatch Box. he had more bounce than tigger.

And why not? in just over a year he has re-galvanised an exhausted and hopelessly divided tory Party, applied shock therapy to our moribund Parliament, secured an unlikely Withdrawal Agreement and won a historic landslide election victory into the bargain.

With the passage of the deceptively dry- sounding EU (Future Relationship) Bill yesterday, his triumph is complete. true to his word he has ‘got Brexit done’ and the result of the 2016 plebiscite has at last been honoured.

As if that were not enough excitement for one day, he was also able to announce the thrilling news that the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid vaccine has received regulatory approval and its roll-out will begin within days.

Cheaper, more plentiful and far easier to store than the Pfizer version, this UK- made vaccine should be the ‘game-changer’ we have been praying for. Although two injections are needed within a 12-week period for maximum protection, trials suggest that after just one jab, even patients who do contract the virus exhibit only mild symptoms.

By late March, all 25 million of those at higher risk should have had their first injection, which means hospitalisations will plummet and the virus should be well and truly on the run. there could yet be glitches, of course. this is an unprecedented logistical exercise and it still needs a massive concentration of resources to execute properly.

As well as restoring public health, mass inoculation remains the surest way of ending the cycle of lockdowns which has crippled hospitality and retail.

these suffocating restrictions must be eased as soon as is humanly possible — while we still have an economy to save. But after all the criticism of Government over errors made during this pandemic (some richly merited), it deserves huge credit for investing so quickly and heavily in the development of the vaccines.

this prescience has put us admirably ahead of other nations.

And what a tribute to our phenomenal pharmaceutical and bio-tech industries that they have produced vaccines in record time. With Brexit upon us, it is our sparkling tech companies which can point the way to a new prosperity based on innovation and free trade. in aerospace, financial systems, artificial intelligence and ‘green’, as well as medical, technologies we are truly at the cutting edge.

Alas, back at Westminster, in stark contrast to bouncing Boris, the leader of her Majesty’s Opposition was wading waist-deep through the slough of despond.

Although Sir Keir Starmer was doing the right thing by instructing his MPs to vote for the deal, he did it with sullen bad grace. it was a ‘thin’ deal with many shortcomings, he said, but the only alternative was No Deal, which had to be avoided at all costs.

With apparently no sense of irony, he complained that the agreement doesn’t protect financial services, our biggest single export. this must surely be the first time any Labour leader has stepped in to save the City of London from tory neglect.

to be fair to Sir Keir, once an ardent Remainer, he is in an invidious position. in the broadly Eurosceptic North and Midlands, he can only win back seats seized by the tories for the first time ever last year by accepting the Brexit war is over and moving on.

But his party’s real power base lies in London and a handful of other Metropolitan strongholds, where many MPs believe Labour should have nothing to do with what they see as a tory deal — even if it is good for the country.

the sad truth is that it’s hard to work out what Labour stands for — or, with the Northern working class deserting them in droves, who they truly represent. they are engaged in an existential struggle for relevance in the 21st century. No wonder Sir Keir looked so red-faced and cross.

Yet even this sulk was overshadowed by the brooding Scottish National Party and its unfailingly pompous Westminster leader ian Blackford.

the SNP had clearly been desperate for Boris to fall flat on his face and for the deal to collapse. their calculation (not entirely fanciful) was that a chaotic No Deal and a humiliated Prime Minister would fuel support for a second independence referendum.

in a fit of pique at being thwarted they voted against yesterday’s Bill. the darkly comic result? By opposing this agreement, the SNP was effectively supporting No Deal — the very thing they claimed would be the greatest disaster of all. By putting naked party advantage above the overwhelming interests of both Scotland and the UK as a whole, they showed precisely how manipulative and monomaniacal they really are.

Yet we must face facts. there is a groundswell in Scotland for another referendum the PM would be foolish to ignore. the free trade deal should help boost his credibility north of the border but he needs to do more. he must be seen to make Brexit work.

Even the briefest glance at the numbers shows independence would make Scots much poorer than any conceivable Brexit outcome — not least because they would instantly lose more than £1,100 per head per year in Barnett Formula cash.

Oil revenues, on which so much of the SNP’s arithmetic was based, have crashed into long-term slump and any hope of readmission to the EU would be predicated on joining the single currency. it would be independence in name only — and ruinously expensive at that.

it is for Mr Johnson to make the powerful positive case for Scotland remaining within the UK, the most enduring and successful alliance in modern history. in doing so, he must fulfil his promise to unite and level up, not just in Scotland but in all the left-behind regions of the UK.

this was the platform he was elected on. And it is the monumental challenge that will shape the rest of his premiership.

For now though, Boris can take a moment to reflect on a job spectacularly well done and on ‘opening a new chapter in our national story’. With the help of his accomplished chief negotiator Lord Frost, he has brought home an honourable free trade deal — allowing the entire country to breathe a sigh of relief.

in some respects Sir Keir is right to say it is ‘thin’, and deliberately so. to make it any fatter would have meant remaining more closely tied to Brussels. Mr Johnson went for free trade with minimal deference to EU laws and institutions and that’s what he got. it is a remarkable achievement on which he must now build.

Charting this country’s evolution from an impecunious European kingdom to the world’s pre-eminent mercantile power, the historian Jan Morris described the British of those times — for all their manifold flaws — as ‘a great people galloping down the high road of history’.

to make a similar claim today would be overblown. But at least the horse is out of the stable. And the hobbles are finally off.