January 2020. “The UK will leave the EU at 23:00 GMT, ending 47 years of membership.” In a video message to be released an hour earlier, Prime Minister Boris Johnson will call Brexit – which follows more than three years of political wrangling – a “new dawn”. A series of events including marches, celebrations and candlelit vigils will be held by both Brexiteers and pro-EU demonstrators. Little will change immediately, as the UK begins a “transition period”. Most EU laws will continue to be in force – including the free movement of people – until the end of December, by which time the UK aims to have reached a permanent free trade agreement with the EU. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the country had to “move on” after Brexit and needed to “make sure we maintain good relations” with the EU and not “fall into the arms of a free tree deal with the United States”. He added that Friday was “a very important day for everybody”, regardless of which way they voted in the 2016 EU referendum. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the UK “must be united in a common vision for our country, however great our differences on achieving it”. Former Prime Minister David Cameron, who led the campaign to remain in the EU during the referendum, called it a “very big day for our country”, adding that he believed the UK could “make a success of the choice that we made”. And Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said: “At last the day comes when we break free. A massive victory for the people against the establishment.” Brexit was originally scheduled for 29 March last year but was repeatedly delayed when MPs rejected a previous withdrawal agreement reached by the EU and former Prime Minister Theresa May. Mr Johnson was able to get his own deal through Parliament after winning December’s general election with a House of Commons majority of 80, on a pledge to “get Brexit done”. This brought to an end more than three years of political argument, following the referendum, in which 52% of voters backed leaving the EU. The prime minister will hold a cabinet meeting in Sunderland – the city that was the first to back Brexit when results were announced after the referendum – later. In his message, Mr Johnson, who led the 2016 campaign to get the UK out of the EU, will attempt to strike an optimistic, non-triumphalist note. “The most important thing to say tonight is that this is not an end but a beginning,” he will say in a message filmed in Downing Street. “This is the moment when the dawn breaks and the curtain goes up on a new act. It is a moment of real national renewal and change.”
Brexit – 31 January 2020 – Part 3
