Waiting for a Brexit deal is like waiting for Godot but with added ennui. Now we are just waiting for white smoke. Around 95% of the legal text has been in place for some time. So, too, has the shape of the overall deal. Dan Hannan, one of the few genuine Brexiteer intellects, once described Brexit as a process rather than an event. He was right. Whether it is in the coming days or a year’s time, a trade deal that is almost identical to the one currently on the table will be agreed. And it still won’t mark the end of the process. But while we wait for the deal, the question is: what happens next? Assuming that the waft of white smoke does emerge from Westminster or the Berlaymont, there is little doubt that a deal would be greenlighted by UK lawmakers at break-neck speed, probably with the support of the opposition Labour party. Mindful of the battering that Labour took in its Brexit-supporting northern heartlands in last December’s election, party leader Keir Starmer is likely to insist that his MPs back Boris Johnson’s deal, as thin as it may be. On the Conservative side, while some MPs will object to the fact that French trawlers will still have access to UK fishing waters and that the UK stays bound by the EU’s regulatory framework (although in practice it would probably not lower regulatory standards anyway), it’s hard to imagine that any more than a handful of hard Brexit purists will oppose the deal. That doesn’t mean that the trade deal on the table now is much cop. READ MORE |