Is Brexit the end or a first step back to EU?

THE Christmas Eve Brexit deal was still the focus for opinion writers over the weekend.

The Sunday Times

John Pienaar wrote: “Brexit is duly ‘done’, and Boris Johnson has broken what his critics and, more quietly, many of his supporters consider the pattern of his life and career so far and actually kept his word.

“The oath that secured his election as party leader and the Conservatives’ pledge to the country required it. Whether you like Brexit or loathe it (and the latest pre-christmas polls say few have changed their minds since 2016), the fundamental demands of democracy required it, too.

“It was, however, the Prime Minister’s own nature that required the moment to be captured in a Downing Street photo – thumbs up, trolling Brussels in a tie decorated with tiny fish, not a hair knowingly in place.”

The Observer

Will Hutton wrote: “The narrow majority in the working population who voted 51% to 49% to remain in the EU in 2016 will grow year by year over the 2020s – so that when the incoming Labour government of 2029, led by one of the MPS who saw the future and voted against the treaty this week, holds its promised referendum on EU membership, the elderly Europhobe voters will this time be outvoted.

“Nigel Farage was wrong when he said the war was over – and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, right when she said, quoting TS Eliot, that in every end there is a beginning.

“Brexit is to be a staging post in Britain’s eventually becoming a fullhearted member of the EU, so regaining our lost rights and freedoms – and ending, as Johnson rightly remarked, our hitherto vexed relationship with Europe. His historic mission will be to have finally settled the issue – but in a way wholly opposite to the one he now imagines.”

The Scotsman

Brian Wilson wrote: “The whole Brexit trick embraced an assumption that the EU would behave as a British government wanted it to, with no interests to defend or cards to play.

“As we will continue to learn to our cost, the EU holds many cards – including, when occasions arise, control of its own borders.

“What should Scotland learn from this? As Nicola Sturgeon correctly pointed out, the scenes at Channel ports had serious implications for Scottish exporters.

“In particular: ‘This is devastating for our world-class seafood businesses and they need our support.’

“But let’s look ahead to the ‘support’ Ms Sturgeon envisages.

“It is to achieve not one but two borders between ‘our world-class businesses’ and the markets on which they depend.

“The partitioning of Britain, inescapably, involves creating a real border where none exists.”