It was always on the cards, but EU trade deal comes as a relief

IT’S a deal! After more than four years of wrangling and with just days to spare, the EU and the UK announced a trade deal on Christmas Eve. If all goes according to plan – and both the UK parliament and MEPs in Brussels must ratify the arrangements – it looks as if the biggest trade deal ever done by either Britain or Europe and worth an estimated £668bn a year will come into effect in time for the end of the Brexit transition period on January 1.

It seemed, at the start of the Brexit process, after the historic vote taken in 2016, inconceivable that a deal would not be done. And pro-Brexit politicians lined up to tell us how easy it would be. Yet it has taken almost every day of those four and a half years and, on the way, cost us a Prime Minister, in Theresa May, who could barely get the talks out of the starting blocks and angered her proBrexit MPs by taking a too soft approach.

She stood aside for Boris Johnson, who managed to get the divorce deal that had so eluded Mrs May and won a thumping majority last December. Proof, if it were needed, that having voted – albeit narrowly – to leave the EU a majority of the British people wanted the negotiating over with and the deed done. Who could have foreseen that Brexit – and the bitter complaints that it was all anyone could talk about – would be replaced by a much bigger issue early in 2020, with the arrival of coronavirus.

As the world wrestled with a deadly pandemic the UK and the EU negotiators talked themselves hoarse in pursuit of a trade deal that preserved the sanctity of the EU single market, gave Britain the sovereignty its Brexiteer politicians had promised, yet allowed free trade to pass between the European bloc and the British nation virtually unimpeded as before. No one should have believed those politicians who said getting agreement would be simple. It has proved anything but.

And yet those who understand these things always said that a deal would be done, even as Boris Johnson was telling us all to prepare for no deal. Commentators in the know dismissed those warnings as no more than a negotiating ploy and kept the faith, even though it got ever more difficult to do so as the weeks and then days ticked down towards the end of the year and the completion of the transition period.

Now, however, while the i’s still need to be dotted and the t’s crossed in some legal fine tuning, the deal has been done. Those passionate about breaking away from Europe and who, often not so secretly, harboured hopes that we might leave on WHO terms, will be examining the small print for what they will see as a concession too far. And on the EU side there will be member states who want to find fault, while others might wonder if they too might be better off outside the club of 27 if the terms Britain has obtained were on offer for them too.

Most of us, however, will be grateful a deal has been done. Farmers, fishermen and businesses should be relieved that, despite the extra paperwork and the snail’s pace negotiations, a blueprint for future frictionless trade between Britain and Europe has been produced. Now we can get back to the most pressing issue – beating coronavirus.