A long and turbulent cycle came to an end on Wednesday 30 December, four and a half years after the referendum on Europe, with the adoption by British parliamentarians of the law transposing into national law the agreed trade and cooperation agreement December 24, in extremis, between London and Brussels. In the House of Commons, 521 deputies voted for, and only 73 against. The Lords barely amended the text and royal assent was granted just after midnight on Wednesday night.
The suspense was very limited, Boris Johnson having a large Conservative majority in the House of Commons and Keir Starmer, the leader of Labor, the main opposition party, having called for a vote for the agreement in order to avoid a “no. deal “to 1er January 2021, with the final exit of the United Kingdom from the internal market and from the European customs union.
Started Wednesday morning, the examination of the text (debates, votes, back and forth between the Houses of Commons and the Lords included) took only a few hours, a speed quite unprecedented for the oldest parliament in office in the world, made compulsory by the proximity of the end of the transition period (December 31 at midnight). Asking elected officials to form an opinion on a treaty of at least 1,200 pages in such a short time is a real ” prank call “ and one “Constitutional failure”, strongly protested the well-respected Hansard Society, an independent parliamentary research group.
Resurgence of the epidemic
Beyond the criticism of the form, this adoption gave each of the political forces involved the opportunity to discuss – a little – the content of the agreement but above all to insist on their respective agendas. Faced with an alarming resurgence of the Covid-19 epidemic (more than 50,000 new positive cases, and 900 deaths in twenty-four hours, Wednesday), Boris Johnson loudly praised the merits of his “Superb” agreement, which, he assures, will allow the country to “Take back one’s freedom”, and insisted on the virtues of a treaty without taxes or quotas with the European Union (EU).
The Prime Minister, who wants to leave as a legacy the “Achievement of Brexit”, is in a hurry to move on and write, he explained on Wednesday, the still rather vague history of “Global Britain”, a “ a liberal force turned towards the world and the good ”. The most Brexiters in his camp had given him their blessing the day before, satisfied with European concessions on fishing and his arguments in favor of a “Regained sovereignty”. “ The agreement is not perfect ”, ruled Iain Duncan Smith, a notorious Eurosceptic, but “The country will have the power to decide for itself”.
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