“The free-trade UK is now subject to more export rules than any country in the world”

Tribune. A very bad surprise awaited this unfortunate contingent of British truckers when they arrived at the port of Rotterdam (Netherlands), the day after Brexit. No sooner had they entered the single market when they had all of their ham sandwich rations confiscated by meticulous Dutch customs officials. The surprise, it should be added, is all in all relative. This is only one of the mechanical consequences of the free trade agreement concluded at the end of 2020 between the United Kingdom and the European Union.

As trivial as it is, this episode is far from trivial. He mightily embody all the challenge that now awaits the United Kingdom in its offshore race. One month after this “Sandwichgate”, has the impact of Brexit merged with that of the coronavirus, or will it end up compromising the hopes of the Conservative Party in the next parliamentary elections?

The first thing is certain: what remained of the challenges to the Brexit agreement was hushed up, with a certain political flair, under the double snuffer of the end of the year celebrations and the weariness of political actors on both sides of the the Channel. There remains an economic reality which seems reluctant to the most picturesque of Boris Johnson’s language elements.

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The Cheshire Cheese Company, a respectable British cheese maker which supported Brexit, has had to resolve since January to attach a veterinary certificate of 180 pounds sterling to each of its packages delivered to the continent. The company therefore plans to build its new warehouses in France, rather than in Cheshire. The current complaints from the fishing and meat sectors can be explained by this certification which applies to all fresh food.

Some headaches

What does it matter, since Boris Johnson made the intrepid bet of making Brexit a strictly political issue, in a country where trade once and finance have long been the first spur. There is, however, something eminently political in the need to declare all goods in transit between Great Britain and Northern Ireland from April onwards. It is to act as a form of commercial separation that“No English prime minister could accept”, according to Theresa May herself.

A poll by the conservative daily Sunday Times at the same time announced that a Northern Irish majority was calling for an Irish reunification referendum within five years. The Scottish Nationalist Party is in a strong position and will campaign for a new independence referendum after the parliamentary elections in the spring. Of “Global Britain” at “Little England”, there is only one step.

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