EU agreement is both an

THE declaration by Michel Barnier, the EU’S chief negotiator, that “the clock has stopped ticking” may have come at the 11th hour, but the news that the UK and EU have concluded a comprehensive deal will come as a relief to many.

It will still be a matter of regret – the prevailing attitude of Mr Barnier and President Ursula von der Leyen’s press conference – for those who wished to remain in the EU. That includes the majority of Scots who, as the First Minister chose to point out just before the announcement, opposed Brexit and regard the process as removing rights and advantages.

Boris Johnson, elected on a hefty UK majority to deliver Brexit, characterised the deal as an unalloyed triumph for the restoration of sovereignty, though it is already clear that there are several areas, notably fisheries policy, where there has been considerable compromise.

All the same, both sides declared that to have secured a deal as wide-ranging as this within a period of just over nine months is entirely without precedent. The EU usually takes years to conclude such agreements, though it is the norm for it to reach its conclusion only at the latest possible moment.

In this case, matters were going in the opposite direction from the norm, disentangling the ties of a 40-year relationship. Against the Prime Minister’s claims of outright success, there are bound to be awkward points buried in the hundreds of pages of technical stipulations.

Bureaucracy and red tape will undoubtedly increase, and there will be the disappearance of free movement, which many viewed as a boon, rather than a problem.

There will be plenty who condemn the deal: ardent pro-eu voices, naturally, but potentially also Brexit supporters for whom no deal that involved any compromise would ever be acceptable.

However, Mr Johnson must be credited with one thing: those who complained that he actively preferred a no-deal outcome, and was deviously