The UK-EU Brexit deal has been completed with a week to spare. At 2:44 p.m. today it was publicly announced that the deal was done.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that a Canada-style Free Trade Deal worth £660 billion each year has been negotiated with the European Union.

The respective EU Parliament and UK Parliament have still to approve the deal, but there are reports that the UK Labour Party will approve the deal and it is expected that the EU Parliament will do the same.

Johnson and his team led by chief negotiator David Frost have managed to hold the EU’s feet to the fire to ensure that trade with the EU continues on 1 January 2021 without the doomsday predictions from Remoaners. A provisional application for a provisional agreement allows free trade to continue until each Parliament has approved it, in particular the EU Parliament which missed its last deadline before 31st December.

5:27 p.m. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer confirms the Labour Party will vote for the post-Brexit Trade Deal.

5:36 p.m. German chancellor Angela Merkel has led “the broad welcome” from Europe’s leaders to the Brexit deal.

The Remoaners are alive and kicking

5:44 p.m. the Remoaners are still active. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey has said that the Lib Dems will not support a bad deal. He can afford to say so as he knows that it will not make much difference to the vote in the House of Commons but he cannot afford to have it on the record that they opposed Brexit till the last minute. Keir Starmer of Labour has more sense than to do so. The Lib Dem leadership has been disastrous in recent years.

Alastair Campbell, Labour’s former Director of Communications under Tony Blair, thinks Labour should abstain otherwise when Brexit unwinds Boris Johnson will be able to say to Labour that it voted for it. However, this premises that the prophetic voice of Remoaners will be able to predict how much better things what would have been except for Brexit. People should prepare for every set-back being blamed on Brexit. This can be illustrated by Guy Verhofstadt’s “understanding” that France’s closing of the border to the UK during the coronavirus pandemic was an effect of Brexit. Rather, it gives insight into such “understanding” and the thinking of Remoaners, who still constitute a large percentage of voters according to psephologist Sir John Curtice.

Nicola Sturgeon complained that Brexit happened against the will of ‘Scotland’ and that a Brexit deal cannot make up for what ‘Scotland’ has lost. Rather, the SNP lost. The SNP leader in the House of Commons, Ian Blackford, called the deal ‘detrimental’ to Scotland.

The Irish prime minister complained that it was “the least bad version of Brexit” and “there is no such thing as a ‘good Brexit’ for Ireland.”

Meanwhile, onwards and upwards from here. There are still challenges but the UK will be responsible for its own laws, economy and standards of living instead of submitting to the rules from the unaccountable bureaucracy in the EU.

Europe and the European Union

Boris Johnson has indicated that he is personally a European and “although we have left the EU, this country will remain culturally, emotionally, historically, strategically, geologically attached to Europe”. He is also a Unionist and will not submit to the separatism of the Scottish National Party.

Nigel Farage, who always wanted a No Deal Brexit, expressed his reservations but told the BBC that it was “a big, historic, important moment”, “a massive step forward, the end of the Brexit wars”. Amen – so let it be!

Links:

Main Brexit terminology and a fuller glossary.

Brexit timeline.

The Wikipedia page about the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement.

Updates:

The Deal is unique in that it secures for the UK what no other third party has ever secured, “tariff-free, quota-free access to the world’s lastest single market, on condition of the level playing field of fair competition on both sides of the [English] Channel”. It was worth recalling that it was British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who proposed and promoted the Single Market, but not the dominating bureaucracy of the developing EU.

It is the biggest trade deal ever, in the fastest time ever. It was reckoned to be impossible to do in a year, but it was completed in spite of the global 2020 coronavirus pandemic lockdown.

On access to UK fishing waters, the debate began with the EU demanding 14 years of access to UK waters, and the UK offering 3 years. The compromise is 5 years after which the UK will review how much access Britain will permit to the eight coastal countries in the EU.

The European Court of Justice will have no jurisdiction whatsoever over the UK from 1/1/2021.

The UK has not submitted to a common policy on foreign affairs, defence and external security, nor has it agreed to the Erasmus Plus programme. The point to notice is that these can be negotiated in the future as a sovereign country, a point that took the EU so long to grasp during the past year’s negotiations, during which the EU negotiators viewed the UK as a vassal state that had to submit to its wishes.

There will be no tariffs (charging taxes on imports of particular items from other countries) but some non-tariff barriers (such as paperwork to complete or regulations to follow) are inevitable because the UK is outside the EU. There will be inevitable changes to cross-border mobility, which will be streamlined in the years ahead, but negotiated as a sovereign nation instead of as a vassal state of the EU.

I am thankful to the Most High. The global pushback against aggressive nationalism and cultural Marxism begins from “Global Britain”, the proven leader of the free world.

24 Dec 2020: Nigel Farage: “The war is over.” It is now time for Nigel Farage to receive his knighthood – four years overdue, but not a moment too soon – is the 2021 New Year’s Honours List too soon? Nigel’s preliminary assessment.

26 Dec 2020: Brexit’s victory includes winning over sceptical 1996 Boris Johnson. Professor Alan Sked, the original Brexiteer, in noting the Remoaners’ complaints, predicts: “prepare for a zombie war till Brexit’s true victory becomes clear.” “Boris has sealed it.”

1 Jan 2021: the predicted post-Brexit chaos at Dover … never happened! More false prophecies:

Despite apocalyptic visions of traffic chaos at British ports, HGVs flowed freely to and from Dover today. A solitary truckload of strawberries from Belgium appeared to be the first, and seemingly only, casualty of the dreaded red tape https://t.co/Y18jvlgjum— The Times (@thetimes) January 1, 2021

1 Jan 2021: Mr Brexit’s New Year’s Day message. “Arise, Sir Nigel!” Thank you, Nigel. I have just begun a 38degrees petition, which can be signed here.

16 Feb 2021: EU annoyed that Germany has closed its borders. It appears that the queuing lorries predicted at Dover were simply predicted at the wrong border. The EU has been unable to secure coronavirus vaccines efficiently, nor to manage the new variant outbreaks.