OK…… Brexit.

So, finally after about 4 months shy of 4 years since The Vote at 23:00 on Friday 31st Jan 2020 we officially left the European Union. Honestly people near me set off fireworks. Yes, honestly. They CELEBRATED Brexit like it was a positive thing.

Of course you’ll hear people saying that “Hey, you Remainers said everything would crash and burn and look…. Nothing has changed”. Which is exactly the point. Nothing HAS changed. What happened on Friday was that we’ve agreed our Leave Agreement. So we’re ‘out’ but at least until 31st December 2020 we still run everything – in relation to the EU anyway – under EU rules. Except that we no longer have any representation on any EU body, committee or anything else. Which essentially means that decisions made by the EU and which might affect us will happen with zero input from us. This will, quite naturally, cause friction in the run up to finalising our future trading relationship with the EU (coincidentally our largest present trading partner by far).

As to a trade deal, the EU have already said that getting one through by Christmas is impossible. Boris is looking to something like the recent Canada deal not harping on the fact that the trade deal with Canada took 7 years and almost failed at the 11th hour. Even if you take the 4 years on the Withdrawal negotiations into account (which we shouldn’t) that’s still another 3 years. We have until October to get a deal ready to put before the EU and if a single country says Non – that’s it. Of course Boris says that WTO rules will be fine and that we’ll prosper no matter what but I can say with equal assurance that next Thursday it’ll be raining champagne between the hours of 4 and 6 in the evening – get those glasses ready, it’ll be great!

For the time being at least everything we keep on keeping on until something somewhere hits a bump. Presumably we now have more ‘control’ over certain things and we’ll start exercising that control to make a point that we have it back. How the EU will react to that if we go too far is anyone’s guess. They’ve already mentioned penalties if we don’t ‘behave’. I imagine also that companies dependent on EU trade will start putting their contingency plans into motion. I’m guessing that over the next few months companies that haven’t already started moving certain of their business elements either onto the Continent or to Southern Ireland will do so. I’m guessing also that countries who use us as a gateway to Europe will start looking elsewhere too – probably again to Southern Ireland.

How exactly things will pan out – I have no real idea. Generally things aren’t as bad or as good as people predict. I certainly hope that they’re not half as bad as some people think they’ll be (including me!). We’ll have to take it one day at a time and see where we end up. Globally we do seem to be going through a particularly turbulent time now and it’s looking like that turbulence will be around for a few more years (probably a decade at least) before things can settle down again. Personally I’m not optimistic. But a train wreck can only really be interesting to watch if you’re not actually sitting in a 2nd Class carriage on the train in question.