Auld lang syne: New Year brings final UK-EU Brexit split

LONDON (AP) — Like a separated couple still living together, Britain and the European Union spent 2020 wrangling and wondering whether they can still be friends.

On Thursday, the UK is finally moving out. At 11 p.m. London time — midnight in Brussels — Britain will economically and practically leave the 27-nation bloc, 11 months after its formal political departure.

After more than four years of Brexit political drama, the day itself is something of an anticlimax.

Lockdown measures to curb the coronavirus have curtailed mass gatherings to celebrate or mourn the moment, though Parliament’s huge Big Ben bell will sound the hour as it prepares to ring in the New Year.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson — for whom Thursday represents the fulfilment of his promise to “Get Brexit Done” — said the day “marks a new beginning in our country’s history and a new relationship with the EU as their biggest ally.”

“This moment is finally upon us and now is the time to seize it,” he said after Britain’s Parliament approved a UK-EU trade deal overnight, the final formal hurdle on the UK side before departure.

It has been 4 1/2 years since Britain voted in a referendum to leave the bloc it joined in 1973.

The UK left the EU’s political structures on January 31 of this year, but the real repercussions of that decision have yet to be felt, since the UK’s economic relationship with the bloc remained unchanged during an 11-month transition period that ends Thursday.

After that, Britain will leave the EU’s vast single market and customs union — the biggest single economic change the country has experienced since World War II.

A free trade agreement sealed on Christmas Eve after months of tense negotiations will ensure Britain and the 27-nation EU can continue to trade in goods without tariffs or quotas.

That should help protect the 660 billion pounds ($894 billion) in annual trade between the two sides, and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that rely on it.

But firms face sheaves of new paperwork and expenses. Traders are struggling to digest the new rules imposed by a 1,200-page deal that was agreed just a week before the changes take place.

The English Channel port of Dover and the Eurotunnel passenger and freight route are bracing for delays, though the pandemic and the holiday weekend mean there will be less cross-Channel traffic than usual.

The vital supply route was snarled for days after France closed its border to UK truckers for 48 hours last week in response to a fast-spreading variant of the virus identified in England.

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