UK parl debates Brexit deal after EU leaders’ nod

LONDON: Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged members of Parliament to approve his Brexit trade agreement and complete Britain’s four-year divorce from the European Union after EU leaders signed the deal with Britain and sent it to London on an RAF jet on Wednesday.

EU chiefs Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel, the heads of the European Commission and European Council, smiled at a brief televised ceremony to put their names to the 1,246-page Trade and Cooperation Agreement, setting their seal on a drawn-out divorce just hours before the UK brings its half-century European experiment to an end.

“It has been a long road. It’s time now to put Brexit behind us. Our future is made in Europe,” von der Leyen said.

Britain will leave the European single market and customs union at 11:00pm local time on Thursday, the end of a difficult year and of a post-Brexit transition period marked by intense and tortuous trade negotiations.

But first the hefty document, bound in blue leather was flown by the Royal Air Force to London for Prime Minister Boris Johnson to add his signature, as the UK parliament began a rushed debate to clear the decks before the looming deadline.

Introducing the legislation to ratify the deal, Johnson told lawmakers it heralded “a new relationship between Britain and the EU as sovereign equals, joined by friendship, commerce, history, interests and values”.

“With this bill we are going to be a friendly neighbour, the best friend and ally the EU could have,” he said.

London and Brussels would work “hand in glove whenever our values and interests coincide, while fulfilling the sovereign wish of the British people to live under their own sovereign laws made by their own sovereign parliament”, he added.

In Brussels, Michel said: “On major issues, the European Union stands ready to work shoulder to shoulder with the United Kingdom.

“This will be the case on climate change, ahead of the COP 26 in Glasgow, and on the global response to pandemics, in particular with a possible treaty on pandemics.”