The UK definitively severed its ties with the European Union on Thursday, an hour before midnight, ending 48 years of turbulent relations, to become a “free” country embarking on a lone future full of challenges.
“When the sun rises tomorrow in 2021 (…) the UK will be free to do things differently, and if need be better, than our EU friends (…) free to make trade deals on everything the world and free to drive our ambition, ”Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a New Year’s Eve message more focused on the coronavirus than on Brexit.
At 23:00 (local and GMT), midnight in much of continental Europe, the country finally left the EU customs union.
Due to the pandemic there were no celebrations. Just what some consider a discreet gesture of complicity: Big Ben, the huge bell placed in a British Parliament tower, restored since 2017, which exceptionally came out of its silence to ring the New Year’s bells, went sound also an hour earlier as part of the tests aimed at checking its mechanism.
With this historic outing, which took place “down Downing Street with his family,” the charismatic and controversial Johnson is aiming for a major personal victory after taking the reins of this chaotic process in July 2019.
His executive even avoided a last-minute shock, reaching an agreement on Thursday with the Spanish government to keep the border with Gibraltar open: the small British enclave at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula will be integrated into the area Schengen free movement of people.
Hope and concern
After years of chaos and political confrontation, the UK officially left the EU on 31 January, implementing what the British decided by 52% of the vote in the June 2016 referendum.
But for eleven months the country was in a “transition period” during which it remained in the customs union and the single market while discussing its future relationship with the 27.
The negotiation, which on several occasions seemed doomed to failure, ended in fruit on 24 December: London and Brussels closed the most complete and comprehensive free trade agreement possible in a record ten months.
With it, the EU offers unprecedented access without tariffs or quotas to its huge market of 450 million consumers in exchange for the British commitment to respect rules that will evolve over time in terms of environment, labor and tax rights, to avoid all unfair competition.
The chaos on the British borders was thus avoided, their ports were blocked by trucks subjected to heavy customs procedures and the shortage of products added to the sadness of a third confinement caused by a strong resurgence of the coronavirus.
However, despite the agreement, bureaucracy will increase and in Dover, the main British port on the English Channel, feelings of hope and uneasiness mingled.
“It will be better, we have to govern ourselves and be our own bosses,” Maureen Martin, a retired Englishwoman, told AFP, while Kirk Hughes, a computer employee, acknowledged feeling “a little nervous” at the potential disturbances.
Looking to the future
The challenges are now considerable for the Johnson administration.
He has promised to give the UK a new place in the world, but is on the verge of losing a powerful ally with the departure of Donald Trump, a Brexit supporter who will be replaced in the White House by more pro-European Democrat Joe Biden.
At the national level, the Conservative executive will have to strive to reunite the British, divided by a Brexit against which both Scotland and Northern Ireland had been voting.
“We leave an empty seat at the table of Europe” but “it will not be empty for a long time,” threatened Scottish pro-independence MP Ian Blackford, the party, the SNP, is demanding a new referendum on self-determination, after the lost in 2014, hoping to be able to reintegrate the EU as an independent state.
Since joining the European Economic Community in 1973, the relationship between the British and the bloc has been marked by conflict.
More interested in economic than political integration, London refused in 1985 to participate in the Schengen agreements and in 1993 in the single currency. And he asked to contribute less to the common budget.
Now the EU is definitely losing its first member and with it 66 million people and a saving of $ 2.85 trillion. And it overcomes the fear that other populists will be tempted to follow suit.
But, free from British brakes, he will be able to continue working on his project of greater political integration.
“It’s been a long road. It’s time to leave Brexit behind. Our future is being built in Europe,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.