Brexit is upon us. Conservatives landslide victory at early elections on December 12 it gave Boris Johnson the solid parliamentary majority he needed to complete the process of leaving the United Kingdom according to his rules and wishes, which could mean a hard Brexit.
BREXIT: THE PROCESS STARTS AGAIN IN THE UK
On 16 December the British Government confirmed that the process for parliamentary ratification will start on Friday 20 December of Withdrawal Bill, the law on the withdrawal which includes the agreement signed by the Premier with the European Union and rejected by Westminster in October. This time, however, the numbers for approval are there and the cartel appears to be in the safe. Which means that Brexit will arrive by the last date agreed with the EU Council: after three and a half years of negotiations and controversies, on 31 January 2020, the UK will be out of the Union.
BREXIT: A YEAR OF TRANSITION
However, this does not mean that the matter will be closed. The transition phase will start on February 1st during which London and Brussels will have to negotiate the future relations between them on security, trade, international cooperation and so on. There will also be a new deadline to meet: the transition period will end on 31 December and until then, even if formally the United Kingdom will not be part of the EU, substantially it will have to continue to respect its rules without having the right to vote.
Therefore, if day after day the doubts about the official date of Brexit fade, new ones are born in parallel. The question that everyone is asking is the following: “will the two parties be able to making such important and complex agreements in such a short time?” Boris Johnson seems to believe so, but just to be safe, he's decided to add to the Brexit bill an amendment which makes it illegal for Parliament to extend the transition process beyond the end of 2020. This was reported by the English newspapers which cite a government official as a source. If this rule were indeed included in the text, its repercussions would be enormous. Why? Because if in six months London and Brussels fail to agree and vote on issues they have failed to agree on in three years, from 1 January 2021 Brexit will automatically become hard, frustrating all the efforts made from 2016 to today and realizing de facto the nightmare no deal. Not to mention that on the basis of precedents (the EU agreements with Canada and Japan are just two examples) it takes years to find the right balance on these issues.
These fears, far from unfounded, are influencing the performance of stock exchanges and sterling, putting an end to the sharp rises made after last Thursday's vote.
BREXIT: THE FREE TRADE AGREEMENT
The European Union, for its part, makes it known that it wants to establish after the divorce an 'unprecedented partnership with the UK'. “We will work for a strong partnership with the UK, including free and fair trade,” explained EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier. The central theme of the talks will in fact be the possibility of agreeing a free trade agreement able to circulate goods and merchandise without imposing quotas or duties of any kind. However, Downing Street seems willing to start negotiations from a very different starting point. According to what Johnson declared during the electoral campaign, the aim will be to get to have standards other than those set by Brussels on fiscal, social, food and environmental legislation.
BREXIT DOMESTIC ISSUES: IRELAND AND SCOTLAND
However, relations with the European Union may not be the only issue that Boris Johnson will have to deal with. The landslide victory in the elections has made him stronger on Brexit, but it also has some implications that may not be easy for the prime minister to deal with. The first concerns the near plebiscite obtained by the Scottish National Party (SNP) in Scotland. With an electoral campaign based on no to Brexit and a new referendum for independence in Edinburgh, the SNP won 48 seats in Westminster, 13 more than two years ago. “The Scots asked to choose their own future, have said they don't want a Conservative government they didn't vote for and they don't want their country to leave the European Union,” said Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon immediately after the election. A declaration that is already a whole program and which heralds the beginning of a fight between London and Edinburgh on the calling of a new separatist referendum after the (failed) one held in 2014.
Not to be underestimated either tensions in Northern Ireland, which in the last three years has represented the real crux of the dispute in the negotiations with the EU, an obstacle overcome only because Johnson agreed to separate de facto Northern Ireland from the rest of the Kingdom, creating a border in the North Sea. In Belfast Sinn Fein (7 seats) and Alliance Party (2), republican parties in favor of reunification with Ireland, obtained overall more seats than the DUP (8), the anti-EU unionist party which instead supports membership of the United Kingdom and which until 12 December held up the Conservative government led first by Theresa May and then by Boris Johnson . This has never happened in the history of Northern Ireland.
The new Northern Irish political order therefore risks bring Belfast and Dublin closer together, pace of Conservatives and the union of the Kingdom that could be sacrificed on the altar of Brexit.
