The week began with a homemade Brexit debacle and ended with what many commentators saw as real progress towards a constructive future relationship building between the exiting UK and the EU. Despite the Northern Ireland hiccup, we had sensed that, following last week’s exit bill compromise, there was a breakthrough in the air. I personally couldn’t believe Northern Ireland’s luck of being offered the tremendous business opportunity of being allowed to remain member of both the UK and the EU. I was already envisaging Belfast becoming a weightier European financial hub than Dublin! Alas, smaller minded nationalist interests prevailed and put an end to that pipe dream.
In the end, not much appeared to have changed between Monday and Friday, except that it was more explicitly phrased that, in case the UK exits the EU without a comprehensive free-trade agreement, then NI would be permitted to continue to trade with the Republic of Ireland as if it was still part of the EU. The point I am not quite sure how to interpret is that the UK government stated that, in that case all, the entire UK will seemingly be under EU rules, in order for NI not to feel cut-off from mainland UK. Does this mean that, as long as the EU refuses to grant the UK a free trade agreement, then the UK will only ever be able to leave in form, but never in substance?
Whichever way it develops from here, this path towards Brexit looks increasingly like a long drawn out softly, softly framework of a new form of associate EU membership. The UK would continue to be broadly a member of the EU’s free trade zone, but operating under an arrangement which allows more exceptions from EU integration than before, at the price of less influence and a lower share of EU common policy benefits.
Without a doubt, a far cry from what 12 months ago Brexiteers were hoping Brexit would bestow on the UK, and what Remainers warned would destroy the UK’s prosperity and fabric of society. While I suspect neither side to be particularly happy at the end of this week, it feels as if the compromise formula we seem to be heading towards is more representative of the 52/48 referendum outcome we actually had, than the 70/30 distribution of Brexit interests we seemed to have under the ‘Brexit means Brexit’ mantra at the beginning of the year. Fingers crossed that the constructive spirit suddenly coming from the negotiating tables will carry over into the coming trade negotiations.
