Forget the past, let’s set sail for prosperity

WELL, it’s over. Actually, several things are over. First of course is the year 2020, surely one of the worst 12 months any of us can remember. At a personal level it was dominated on a daily basis by the invasion of our sceptred isle by Covid- 19, the oriental pandemic which I remain convinced could have been coped with infinitely better than it was. ( More anon.) On a national level we can look back on our final year inside, and subordinate to, the European Union and its freedom- crippling rule- book.

Of course the final settlement was a comprom mise – all complex negotiat ations are unless a crushing def defeat in war permits the victor to determine all the terms. Thi This particular compromise settlement was strung out to the last nanosecond by the conviction in the EU that we would finally have to crumble rather than face a No Deal departure into a presumed economic wilderness.

They were wrong – we didn’t. And quite right too. This was because “No Deal” was always an erroneous phrase, deliberately created and bandied about both in Europe and by our own Quislings to frighten the hell out of us.

It failed because in part No Deal simply meant reverting to trading with the EU on the rule- book of the World Trade Organisation which is the set of terms that applies to most of world trade.

And it failed because, despite months of bluster, the EU recognised that No Deal was going to be as damaging to the EU as to ourselves and especially to Germany, the industrial manufacturing powerhouse of Europe. I suspect German influence, emerging from a panicky Berlin, played a covert role in the last- second EU concessions that clinched the deal.

For the final month, maybe more, it was all down to a single and simple question: do we British recover ( not retain) ultimate control over our laws, money, borders and territorial waters and the fish in them?

Without these four we would have been no more sovereign than your pet dog is calling the shots. We made a few minor concessions because we had to ( face- saving for Brussels), but we won the big ones.

So credit to our negotiator Lord

David Frost and his boss Boris Johnson despite a remaining quandary. Why was BoJo so Churchillian over Brexit but such a wimp over Covid- 19?

Even as I write, most of the media ( all forms) are looking back. Let’s look forward.

The new initials that matter are FTA, standing for Free Trade Agreement. Liberation from the EU means we can now clinch FTAs with anyone we choose without Brussels’ permission. Liz Truss and her mandarins have quietly done a lot more work on these than has been released so far.

But my snouts inform me that

out there beyond EU thralldom are huge contracts awaiting us and a score of major world- spanning economies gagging to do more – and very lucrative – business with us. These are the chances, alliances and opportunities we should be more concerned with than the EU- subservient past.

We Brits have been free- traders since recorded history began and our merchant- venturers spread their sails to the wind and went to Earth’s four corners to buy and sell.

This, not war, was the foundation of our prosperity. We have done it once; we can do it again. If only we can stop panicking over Covid- 19.