One good thing could come out of Brexit: a bonfire of national illusions

They have done it. The right wing of the Conservative party has won a historic victory. The UK will be a sovereign “third country”, with a limited trade deal with the EU. The UK, rightwingers believe, has been reconciled to its true history as a nation of offshore islanders.

But they have also failed, according to their own terms. Theresa May’s “red, white and blue” Brexit is long dead, and a bad deal turned out to be better than no deal. The EU will not be supplanted by a great new Europe where British trade flows unimpeded; there are now frictions and barriers, not least in services. Any serious deregulatory move by the UK will be met with EU retaliation.

In short, the UK has repatriated economic sovereignty and discovered that, far from allowing it to humble the EU, it has harmed itself. Leaders who supposedly stood up for the greatness of the renewed British nation have been revealed as “champions of free trade” who don’t understand the modern economy – and as boastful flag-waving nationalists who don’t realise that great British rulers once looked down on such tinpot antics.

Continued in the Guardian 1st January 2021