Brexit Is Here! Sort Of - The New York Times

Finally, after 1,317 days of confusion, rancor and endless votes in Parliament, it was time for Brexit. On Wednesday, teary members of the European Parliament joined hands and sang “Auld Lang Syne,” a clock projected onto 10 Downing Street counted down the minutes, Union Jacks lined the Mall before Buckingham Palace.

“A new dawn for Europe,” leaders of the European Union wrote in a joint article.

“This is the moment when the dawn breaks,” came Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s echo from across the newly raised dividing line.

It was left to the dispassionate BBC to cut short the bathos: “Brexit is far from ‘done,’” the Beeb coldly said, before listing the many travails still to come, most notably the negotiations that now begin with the E.U. on the details of Britain’s future relationship with the Continent. Mr. Johnson has promised not to seek an extension of the Dec. 31 deadline, which he could, though a less complex trade deal between the E.U. and Canada took seven years to finish. To discourage other members from exiting, the E.U. is not likely to cut Britain much slack on E.U. standards and rules in their trade.

Britain will now also reach across the Atlantic to what President Trump has held out as a “very big trade deal, bigger than we’ve ever had with the U.K.,” which Mr. Johnson has touted as a benefit of quitting the E.U. That, too, could prove a disappointment. A former British ambassador to Washington, Kim Darroch — who resigned in July after his derogatory comments about Mr. Trump leaked out — was among those who noted in interviews that Mr. Trump is not given to generous trade concessions, least of all in an election year.

In the same European Parliament session at which Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the E.U. Commission, promised departing British delegates, “We will always love you, and we will never be far,” Aileen McLeod of the Scottish National Party spoke of Scotland’s anger over being “dragged” out of the union and asked that the members “leave a light on” for Scotland, where Brexit has fueled demands for a new referendum on independence.

Still, the fact was that after 47 years in the E.U., Britain was officially out, and there was no going back, at least not in the foreseeable future. For many Britons, the long and bitter debate had been less about economics and politics than about identity. Those who fought to leave the E.U. fought for what they saw as lost sovereignty, often tinged with a sense of lost empire; those who fought to stay saw the Union as post-imperial Britain’s place in the future, joined with the rest of Europe in values, standards and security. In the end, after nearly three years of uncertainty and bitterness, voters elected Mr. Johnson out of exhaustion, to get it over with, not because they had reached agreement.

Headlines reflected the divide. Pro-Brexit tabloids joined in gleeful celebration: “OUR TIME HAS COME,” proclaimed The Sun, offering a “free giant Brexit poster”; “YES, WE DID IT!” cheered The Daily Express in what it described as a historic edition; “Free and independent once more after 47 years,” declared The Daily Mail over a photograph of the white cliffs of Dover. Those same cliffs featured on the cover of The Guardian, a strong advocate of staying in the E.U., over a crumbling sand castle surmounted by a tiny British flag. The headline: “Small island.”

Trying to reconcile these divergent worldviews will be the main task of coming years, as Mr. Johnson appeared to recognize when he declared in a speech to the nation Friday evening: “Our job as the government, my job, is to bring this country together now and take us forward. … This is not an end but a beginning.”

For the moment, what “forward” meant remained unclear. For at least the coming years not much would change in economic, trade and practical terms, but many potential battles loomed over the shape of the future relationship with Europe, America and the rest of the world.

Perhaps in paraphrasing Winston Churchill on whether the moment was an end or a beginning, Mr. Johnson would have done better to use his predecessor’s entire quote, that one about a military campaign 78 years ago: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

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Brexit Is Here! Sort Of - The New York Times
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